end of June/ beginning of July

The hollyhocks next door are looking magnificent. I think the garden next door (which I look after) has finally recovered from two lots of destructive building works in 2013 and 2010.

allium sphaerocephalon

planting the hostas in pots has been a great success, only 1 has slug damage and that was the one with the foxglove which I think they got up to get to the hosta, huge leaves and 2 flower spikes on this one

the purple colour of this salvia amistad is exquisite

the teasels have just bloomed, this one has a bee just visible bottom left

I tried to grow poppies for the centenary of the start of World War 1. It's been a complete failure. I was surprised to see this one actually growing in this pot. Of the thousands of seeds I broadcast I had about 2 plants.

the first water lily of the year, I can see a couple of other buds

these viola chicky chicks have been very fast to bloom, I see a foxglove self-seeding at the front there and what looks like verbena bonariensis at the back

one of my unknown plants is mint (I noticed that unmistakeable smell yesterday)

I picked a leaf from another mint I have to compare, now to find what kind of mint

I'm still having trouble with slugs, for some reason they attacked the pot of cornflowers on the right and left the pot on the left alone

some of the nasturtium (Phoenix) seedlings a week after the pic below, 21 out of 25 seeds in the packet germinated, quite a good result

these are the kinds of seed I love: the nasturtium in the terracotta pots, almost every pot has at least 1 germinated seed (out of 2 seeds I planted) and the bergamot which has germinated and grown very well, whereas the delphiniums in the black plastic pots under the nasturtiums have no seeds germinated at all

I seem to have massive success with seeds or very little, the bergamot seeds are doing too well - I have too many so have to do the painful task of thinning them out, I did try planting some of the seedlings I thinned out in the pots top right, I'll see how they do