Garden at the beginning of the month August 2015

The 1st August is a Saturday, and fine, so I could get the photos taken on the day for once! The weather has gone a bit cooler again (after torrential rain last week), which means the grass has greened up again. Everything is still a bit on the brown side though, and I don't think things are growing as well as they did last year. Think it must have been the early heatwave.

Echinacea. Although there's several flowers, these haven't reached the height they normally do.

Echinops, with bee. I grew these from seed a couple of years ago, and, although they've been really good at attracting insects, they have grown enormous and are crowding out some other plants. Plus the bottom two thirds of them are quite ugly, so I think they're going to go once they've finished flowering.

The lavender is flowering well, and has also been covered in insects.

The first gladioli to flower. I staggered the planting of these so we should have a couple in flower the whole of the rest of the summer.

Rudbeckia bought last year and flowering for the first time.

Japanese anenome bought four years ago. This is doing really well and has loads of flowers on it, which keep on coming into the autumn as long as I remember to dead head.