There was so much in bloom for June Bloom Day that I left a few of photos off the main post. In fact, what I left out was the one flower that is blooming just about everywhere in my garden, the annual Black Eyed Susan, Rudbeckia hirta.
Here it is with Gladiolas and the last of the larkspurs. Suddenly there are glads all over town. These ones were "liberated" from the garden at a rental house my friend was moving away from. We thought it would be nice if she could take some flowers with her to be sure to have some at her new house. The rental never missed them, I'm sure (we only took a little bit). Since I'd never had glads, I accepted some liberated gladiolas for my own garden. I think they look pretty nice with the black-eyed susans, although it was not a combination I planned.
Combining with the purple coneflower and the dark-leaved canna, as above, is more what I had in mind. The white flower in the background is some kind of Erigeron (fleabane) that came up on its own. I'll probably regret letting it stay, next year, when I'm weeding out dozens of its progeny, but I just adore little white daisies combining with everything. Some of my favorites are chamomile in the spring and a special native aster I'm sure I'll write about in the fall. Until this year, I didn't even know I could have tiny white daisies like this in June.
Above are the black-eyed susans with Pycnanthemum, mountain mint. Up close, the mountain mint blooms are
nothing special except to the gazillion pollinators they attract, but I
really like the silvery color en masse. This mint is very pungent, a
little too strong to eat but very nice dried for tea, along with a
little lemon verbena.
One more combination. I let the black-eyed susans come up pretty much wherever they want, as you can see. One plant came up right in the middle of my glossy abelia. I might have pulled this one, except I think it looks awesome with this Gloriosa lily that just started blooming in my garden. I blogged about the Gloriosa lily last week. In fact, this is almost the same picture that I posted before, but now a second bloom has opened and the first one is aging. Look at that! The aging bloom turns more red! This is one crazy amazing flower.
Gloriosa lily, Gloriosa daisy. Is it the combination of red and yellow that caused these to be considered glorious? The black-eyed susan is very variable, and I frequently get versions of this pattern with the dark marroon red in the center. These ones are called Gloriosa daisies, but it's the same species.
