It has been a tough week to be a gardener in South Wales. A good week, but challenging all the same. The weather has been unnationally hot, other climes might call it warm, but for us it was definitely bloomin’ scorching. Not the best working conditions, but we made it through. Next week we are expecting rain, the water butts will be refilled, but I’m not sure how quickly I can adapt to this handbrake turn. I would make a dreadful Borg. To find out how others have been coping with the heat/warmth/wet/dry/cold pop over to our leader Jim at Garden Ruminations and prepare to be enlightened. Let’s get started, it is nearly June.
First we have Melittis ‘Royal Velvet Distinction’ skulking in the shadows beneath Forest Pansy. I am not as fond as I was when I first encountered it, I am rather fickle in my affections. Still, it seems happy where it is, gives me a little smile when I catch its eye, and I would be daft not to value a trouble free, passive plant. It can’t all be horticultural champagne and caviar. Although to be honest I wouldn’t mind if it was.
Is this Digitalis lutea? I think so. The label pixie has been up to their tricks again. Nice though.
I’m not generally one for the chimera of the plant world. However, I have been seduced by x Petchoa ‘BeautiCal Sunset Orange’ which quite frankly I would have put back on the shelf if I had bothered to read its pretentious name. The capital C mid word makes me want to push a custard pie into someone’s face. Which amounts to Stage 10 on the violence scale for me. Serious. I love it in spite of myself.
Rosa ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ had a down year in 2025, possibly due to nearby thugs which have since been subdued/composted. This year it has recovered and is full of bud, albeit covered in greenfly. I am depending on an aphid predator flyby, otherwise squishing will be necessary.
Bletilla striata ‘Alba’ is flowering exceptionally well, quite surprisingly so. Dreadful photo, you will have to take my word for its loveliness.
Dahlia ‘Peggy Pearlers’ is flowering. If you know you know. If you don’t, you had better delve deeper.
All done, another Six completed. June next time. Where is the “slow down” button?
Off The Edge Gardening 
Well, I have to say I really like the Melittis ‘Royal Velvet Distinction’. Not that I’ve come across it before but someone’s got to stand in its corner 😉Dahlias are a real favourite of mine and that one is a little beauty! have a great week!
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That made me smile, you are quite right of course. You have a good one too!
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Ground orchids aren’t easy to photograph… The white variety is really lovely too. You’re right. Love the melittis ( I tried and failed from seeds years ago…)
The dahlias are already blooming for you?! We’ll have to wait a little longer here.
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I should have bent down a little more and got a better shot of the lovely lipped petal. It was rather gloomy and I was rushing. My first dahlia by a long way!
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Lots of gorgeous flowers this week but I think the bletilla is one I’ll be adding to my wishlist for the front garden, which I’m planning to be all white when I re-do it.
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That would look a treat, it is such a lovely flower.
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Stupid name aside that petchoa is a lovely colour. And now I want custard…
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Oh no, so do I. This is like a custard Mexican wave!
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I didn’t get to the garden centre until today, where I had a custard slice…
Also a clematis, some lantana, impulse but succulents, and a couple more candelabra primula… There may have been more.
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I am impressed! 😁
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I’m drawn to the lutea – the foxes have chosen to settle themselves into mine and have broken several stems. I’m hoping they will leave it alone now and some of them will get to flower. Yours looks so lovely, a perfect gentle yellow. Everything else wonderful too – I count myself as one who knows!
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Your foxes have excellent taste. It is a lovely yellow. And yes, you are definitely in with the in crowd.
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Yes, it has been too hot, and I don’t think I have the same resilience, afternoons spent supine reading for me. Lovely Dahlia and how well you are bringing this on: top prize for first Dahlia in flower I have seen with my own eyes!
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Now that sounds much more sensible. Peggy has had some special treatment, still struggling to propagate from her.
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I take your word on the beautiful Bletilla striata ‘Alba’.. I believe I have the same label stealing pixie in my yard. If not stolen, it is defaced.
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Oh my, do you think they are country specific or as mischievous the world over?
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Some lovely plants here, bonkers names and all. Your digitalis lutea is well ahead of mine here in Shropshire, but then mine spent much of the winter-early spring months making a lot of vegetation, most of it in the prone position which seems a bit odd. We’ll see what happens next…
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Fingers crossed they will right themselves and get on with the job at hand!
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Too hot for me, though I know several Aussies who are quietly smirking. It’s all relative and jumping from 13C to 25C and back to 16C is not natural. Echoes of the menopause.
Melittis ‘Royal Velvet Distinction’ looks rather pretty to me. But whoever named that Petchoa needs dunking. TBH I had to look it up, I hadn’t heard of this hybrid before. Maybe something to look out for when I visit the garden centre. I am severely lacking patio plants, but now wondering whether to even bother. But at the rate everything is flowering there will be nothing left by July.
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Laughed at the “dunking”, sounds like a fabulous idea. It is nice though. I bet a committee was involved in the naming, or an advertising agency.
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Digitalis lutea is a beauty and ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ is living up to its name. I’ve been trying to resist squishing the aphids on the roses and everything else, waiting for this alleged harmonious balance of predator/pest thing to kick in!
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I tried to wait for the ladybirds, but this afternoon did a little nominal squish, looking out for lurking munchers.
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x Petcoa looks a bit like CaliBrachoa, is there a Petuniaceae family? Your Royal Velvet Distinction is quite a lot paler than the thing I bought under the same name and I’d be suspicious that it had been seed raised (they come true-ish) and not done vegetatively.
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RVD was seed purloined, does that count? Collected from a vigourously seeding parent. As for the x P, I’m sure there is, subsection unnecessary capital division. It is susposedly a bushy rather than trail-y plant.
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Bletilla striata is rare, and ‘Alba’ is even rarer. I like it because it is so accommodating, but perhaps that is why it has become rare. I think that it can be invasive in some situations.
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Perhaps, but not here, yet ……!
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I just checked, Petchoa is a cross between petunia and Calibrachoa. New to me. I think we should have a national boycot of plants with ridiculous or illiterate names. It is pretty though. But a white bletilla is awesome.
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I think you are right, from now on though, I’m sending this one back. Glad you like the bletilla.
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Petchoa? I guess the Cal is California? Bletilla is awesome.
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Perhaps! And definitely 😁
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