China Girl blog

You look with your eyes and see with your soul. The lovely July garden is as beautiful as the June garden. Structure, texture, colour and balance make for what the eye sees. They are the four golden markers of a garden, achieved in part by the rose Rosa mutabilis planted throughout Cothay, its colour mingling with other plants, soft and fragile, it can be planted anywhere.

This week we have all been working in the blue & white herbaceous border. Dead-heading the charming daisy Anthemis cretica sub-sp cupaniana, a native of Sicily. This edges the border, its foliage a soft bluish green; dead-heading has given the border an immediate lift.

The flower of the week must be in the Walk of the Unicorn, where 200 metres of Nepita Six Hills Giant flowers all the summer. Each plant spreads a metre wide, its origins from Europe & North Africa, tough and hardy. Its dark blue flowers light up the garden. Seen with the inner eye, nothing can rival this plant for ground cover.