Flowers, in combination, can produce a memorable garden. I try to recreate that idea with my cards.
A combination of Clematis Nelly Moser and a variety of blue flowers like geraniums and campanula are beautifully framed by yellow rosebuds with red highlights.
The dark cream rose is highlighted by the soft, pale purple of a Chinese wisteria with the buds of the wisteria adding movement.
The peony is radiant with all the colours of red given by sunlight and shadow. The background colour is matched with a colour from clematis armandii.
The peony is fluorescent with multi pink colours which are reflected in the pelargonium flower’s centre sparks of colour
The Barbara Cartland (what a character!) pelargonium is an intensely vibrant colour, accentuated by the white with a dash of mauve morning glories.
The Shakespeare rose is majestic in its own right but surrounding it with the white/cream/ mellow yellow tones of clematis armandii gives it even more vibrancy.
The wonderful clematis Nellie Moser has a myriad of colours surrounded by geraniums and morning glories echoing those colours.
Rock rose, Cistus x purpureus, presents loads of blooms all through the summer although each bloom lasts just one day. I love how fragile it looks.
The allium is a late spring bulb. It is impossible to separate its very small flowers from the background, hence, the photo. The geraniums echo its intense colours.
Lavatera, also known as tree mallow is an attractive shrub with large flowers throughout the summer months.
The astrantia is a very delicate flower with a wonderful colour combination. The small anemones echo the colour of the centre of the astrantia.
The first year I arrived in my current home, I planted an array of crocuses and this card was the colourful purple/blue result. Certain yellow centres of crocus produce saffron.
I love Christmas Cactus and the fact that you can prick off a leaf, pop into compost and have a new plant quite quickly. This is an amalgam of a number of the flowers from my 5 plants.
Another combination of geraniums which seem to compliment each other. The added effect is the wonderful raindrops.
An inherited red rose in one much loved, and now abandoned, garden in a former home linked to cherry blossom in a new home.
The unknown red rose, always linked to love, is multiplied for the emotional effects of a red rose. Combined with the delicate pink of the geranium, it packs extra punch.
We created a little pond in our new house in which to plunge our lovely irises. They are matched here with the purples and blues of clematis Nelly Moser, aquilegia and campanula.
Officially these plants are called geraniums. They are ground-covering plants with a variety of amazing colours and shapes. It’s confusing because now we call pelargoniums geraniums!!
A rose at a new home with a hawthorn flower at a former home. The hawthorn is a British tree and is loved for its blossoms in Spring and its berries for birds in the winter.
This is the flower of a tree peony, a shrub which can grow to about 6 feet wide and high. The flowers are sumptuous and about 6 inches in diameter.
To me this is the perfect red rose. It embodies all the beauty of Shakespeare’s love sonnets which I have lived with for most of my life.
A lovely pink hibiscus with a deep red centre, enjoying th light and shade and surrounded by morning glories with hints of the same pinks.
Christmas Cactus is used in a more architectural approach with Abyssinian gladioli. They are late flowering so a bonus in the colder months.
The wonderful agapanthus which sometimes flowers and just looks forlorn surrounded by dicentra and chamomile.
