My Wild Garden

This week’s Lens Artists Photo Challenge is Gardens. I thought I’d take you on a little tour of my garden pond where I’ve planted many wildflowers over the last few years. So have a little wander with me…

The Red Campions (Silene dioica) have just started flowering:

The Common Valerian (Valeriana officinalis) looks like it’s going to have loads of flowers! It’s the first year flowering for this one. It was planted last year but didn’t manage to flower. This year it’s grown tall and I’m excited to see the flowers.

There are a LOT of Water Mint (Mentha aquatica) plants this year. They clearly really like living by my pond. I only planted one plant a few years back and now there’s a carpet of them, and some are growing in the pond itself. They smell so nice, and there will be loads of flowers later on.

Another plant that seems to be loving life here is the Yellow Loosestrife (Lysimachia vulgaris). Again I only planted one, but now they’re popping up everywhere. Looking forward to them flowering – lots of pretty yellow flowers that seem to last for ages.

This next one is one I planted last year (I think), like the Common Valerian. However I can’t work out which plant this is! 😀 Oops, hopefully it will become clear when these flowers reveal themselves fully.

The Alchemilla plants which pop up all over the place are looking so pretty after the rain we’ve had, with droplets glistening in the sunshine.

My slightly straggly looking Lavender seems to be perking up a bit this year and has a lot of fresh new growth:

The Snake’s Head Fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris) are now very much on the growing seeds stage of their lives. It’s quite strange how they go from flowers that hang down, then straighten up to fully vertical when they’re growing their seeds.

Lurking near the ground are some of the other plants that are growing. Like Wild Basil (Clinopodium vulgare) and Marsh Mallow (Althaea officinalis):

And one I need to keep an eye otherwise it overwhelms all the other plant! Hemp Agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum):

It’s already lovely to sit by the pond on a warm day looking at all the fresh new spring growth, and newt spotting, but it’s going to be even lovelier when there are more flowers to enjoy, and more bees and other insects visiting. I do love my wild garden 🙂