The garden stars of a dreary June

Credit: Barbara Rayment

Mizuna, Fernleaf bleeding heart and Martagon lilies flourish despite a lackluster June

The end of June is not supposed to be cold and wet, but only the peas and a few of the hardy Chinese greens are doing well in the veggie garden.

Mizuna is definitely a winner – repeatedly harvested back to an inch or so tall for salads, it just keeps regrowing. Other brassicas bolted (i.e. switched to putting their energy into flowering and going to seed) during the few hot days we had.

After being harvested twice already, the mizuna is still growing strong in this cool wet weather. Image: Barbara Rayment

The ‘Toy Choy’ (a miniature Pac Choi) was left to go to seed, for saving, the others are done and gone and more carrots planted. In the woodland garden, the little Fernleaf bleeding heart (Dicentra eximia) is once again the star – it has been blooming for a couple of weeks and will continue until fall. It self-seeds, but politely; it’s easy to weed out in the wrong spot, but there aren’t too many wrong spots.

The variability is interesting – dusty pink is the most usual colour, but it ranges from almost white to almost true red. All shades go nicely with various named purple-leaf Coral bells (Heuchera) and self-seeded purple leaf geraniums (Geranium pratense seedlings from ‘Victor Reiter’).

And half a dozen varieties each of Jacob’s ladder (Polemonium) and windflowers (Anemone), and my treasured Martagon lilies. It’s a bit wild, but that’s okay. The Martagon lilies were the only things I had to protect from the deer (with a mess of old tomato cages and wire plant supports), who moved on when denied that delicacy.

Or maybe they were planning on moving on anyway – cause and effect are always hard to prove in the garden. (“Correlation is not cause”, as someone said.)