Hydrangea Week

Buddleja comes into bloom in week 2009/28. I left long stalks and old flower heads on this shrub in the winter, because I wanted it to gain height, and that may have helped it to flower a few days earlier than it might have. Hydrangea varieties are in flower. My own white mopheads remain disappointing, whereas the more compact blues and pinks of neighbours are genuinely enviable. Heliopsis helianthoides var. scabra is showing its ox-eye sunflowers, and a few Phlox are in early flower. The first petals are visible on some of the Rudbeckia and its Echinacea relatives. A surprise is a flush of white bloom on one of my two tea-tree bushes which has been planted out only three months ago into one of the dryest spots in the garden, under a fir tree.

Hydrangea Week

This is the week when buds of mop-head hydrangea that have survived spring frosts finally begin to produce big blooms. Among the perennials in 2008/28, Phlox bursts forth and the day lilies begin their long run.