The flowers for today’s vase are all homegrown from seed this year. The seeds were sown in late March, potted on and tended for a few months and then planted out in mid-July – later than intended but it took a while to clear the area of bindweed. (As always, we under-estimated the time it would take to prepare the ground…) By the time we got round to putting the plants in situ, most were pot-bound and desperate to get into the soil and I was worried they’d be weak and wobbly as a result.  No matter. They’re fine. They are all growing strongly and blooming away, attracting all kinds of winged creatures. Only one of the sunflower plants survived the slug and snail onslaught from earlier in the year, unfortunately, but it is now pumping out branches of deep, dark flowers. I will leave the remaining flowers on the plant to go to seed for the birds. The outstanding success of the patch, however, has been the Ammi – some of the flowerheads are about 30cm across, huge plates of tiny white flowers forming large insect-helipads.

While I was cutting flowers earlier, bees, hoverflies and butterflies were all flying about ignoring me. One determined bee busied itself on a sunflower head as I carried the bunch back to the house and only flew off when I got to the door. I felt a bit bad about pinching it’s nectar!

Flowers in the vase are:
Cosmos (from a dark mix)
Tithonia rotondiflora ‘Torch’
Sunflower ‘Black Magic F1’
Ammi visnaga ‘White’
Scabious atropurpurea ‘Salmon Pink’

It’s lovely to be joining in again with Cathy at Rambling in the Garden for her gathering of Monday vases. Do hop over to see her vase (actually, her mum’s this week!) and other floriferous offerings from around the world. Wishing you a super-duper week.