My wife and I started gardening in Fukuoka (Japan) in 2003. There was nothing but muddy clayey sloping land. At the beginning we made several structure such as steps and paths, and planted turf, fruit trees, roses, herbs etc.
In 2010, we visited several famous English gardens, including Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Mottisfont Abbey Garden and Hidcote Manor Garden. We were shocked by the glory of those gardens. Since then, we have been trying to make small but glorious gardens by ourselves.
Scarborough Fair is a wonderful English rose created by David Austin. It always flowers at the end of a new branch and blooms frequently and repeatedly from early summer to late autumn. The flowers are of a very pretty pink colour. In the video you can see the rose in bloom now with the famous song of the same name by Simon and Garfunkel.
I was looking out of my window into the garden and saw some flowers amongst the overgrown wisterias on the brick wall. These flowers bloomed in spring and are now returning in small numbers. The flowers are a beautiful blue-purple colour and I tried to photograph them with the other blue flowers in the garden.
The kumquat at the east end of the garden has started to flower a lot. There were a few flowers at the beginning of the summer and a few small fruits, but this time there are so many flowers that I hope there will be lots of fruits.
In the shade garden by the garden room, the acanthus has entered its summer dormancy and the above-ground parts have died. The hostas have retained their beautiful foliage and one of them has started to flower. The buds are pale purple and the petals are pure white when in flower. It is the hottest time of the year and I can't work in the garden during the day, and it is very hot in the mornings and evenings, so I do minimal work in the garden. I hope the mornings and evenings will soon get cooler.
Two flowers that continue to bloom over the blue border bed today, despite the intense summer heat. They are the pale blue-purple chaste tree and the red trumpet vine.
The chaste tree is a flowering tree with recurring branches and flowers during the summer months. It is cut back every year in late autumn at a height of about 50 cm from the ground, but in summer it grows up to three metres high. It looks very cool in the breeze.
The trumpet vine is a deciduous vine with red trumpet-shaped flowers that bloom repeatedly during the summer months. The flowering plant in our garden is Campsis radicans, which is native in United States, which originally grew up to 5 metres up a tree, which was cut down, and I made it into a kind of standard plant. It is a vine plant, but the trunk grows to over 10 cm in diameter and is self-supporting.
The roses are re-flowering in the mid-summer heatwave. The Angela in the arch, the Mary Rose and Contes de Ségur by the staircase are all producing beautiful pink flowers at the tips of their new, longer branches.
The weather forecast warns of record heat again today.
Apart from early morning watering, We will stay indoors and not go out in the garden.
