Last weekend in October

     It's hard to believe but I'm done with planting in the garden for this year. On Sunday I planted last spring bulbs. For the first time I'm trying Iris reticulata, they should be early bloomers together with Chionodoxa forbesii and crocus followed by Anemone blanda and Мuscari armeniacum. Since we built a fence I finally could plant crocus, tulips and hyacinths without worrying for them to be eaten by roe deer. So I planted tulips 'Queen of the Night', I'm curios if they are really as dark as in pictures. My favourite spring bulbs are hyacinths. Yellow 'City of Haarlem', burgundy purple 'Woodstock' and dark violet blue 'Peter Stuyvesant' were planted together, we'll see if they fit each other.

     From Germany we brought some new additions to my small collection of Garden Phlox. Last year I planted my first Phlox paniculata 'Bright Eyes' and it bloomed great. So I decided to get more phloxes. So for next summer I'm looking forward to see blooming of P. paniculata 'Tenor', 'Rainbow', 'Watermelon Punch', 'Tequila Sunrise', 'Strawberry Daiquiri', 'Piña Colada', 'Junior Dream', 'Pünktchen' and 'Uspech'.

Bright Eyes

Tenor

Picture borrowed from the gallery of Hartmut Rieger

Rainbow

Picture borrowed from the gallery of Hartmut Rieger

Watermelon Punch

Picture borrowed from the gallery of Hartmut Rieger

Tequila Sunrise

Picture borrowed from the gallery of Hartmut Rieger

Strawberry Daiquiri

Picture borrowed from the gallery of Hartmut Rieger

Piña Colada

Picture borrowed from the gallery of Hartmut Rieger

Junior Dream

Picture borrowed from the gallery of Hartmut Rieger

Pünktchen

Picture borrowed from the gallery of Hartmut Rieger

Uspech

Picture borrowed from the gallery of Hartmut Rieger

Karl Foerster garden and nursery in Potsdam

   Yesterday we visited an amazing historical private garden founded by Karl Foerster in 1910-1912. He is famous for his work in breeding perennial plants and Garden Phlox in particular. The garden is situated in German town Potsdam right behind the world famous Sanssouci Park.
   It's end of October but the colors in this perennial garden are as bright as you would expect in a middle of summer. The weather was a bit dull and foggy, not the best conditions for taking photos. But colors are shining everywhere anyway.

Upper garden

   This Aconitum carmichaelii is in its blooming peak. Very deep color.

   In the shady part of the garden is growing an impressive mound of my favorite grass Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola'.

   Low garden is full of well thought and colorful plant combinations.

Low garden

   Among lush perennials I noted some dahlias. Bishop of Llandaff is known for its dark bronze foliage. It doesn't need staking since the bush is not growing very tall. These characteristics make Bishop series of dahlias attractive for landscape designers.

Bishop of Llandaff

   Next to the garden is situated the nursery and a plant shop - a dream of any perennial enthusiast. The choice of plants is huge and prices are mostly just 50% of those in Swedish plant shops. Of course, I found some additions for my small Garden Phlox collection - bushy low-growing Junior Dream and bright orange-red Pünktchen. Choice of hostas was very interesting, a lot of well grown multiple shoot plants. I picked a nice plant of miniature Shiny Penny.

Plant shop

Field with hostas

Dahlia season 2011: part VII, last dahlias for the season

   Tonight SMHI is predicting first real freezing. So I guess I'll find frozen dahlia garden tomorrow morning. Anyway it's time to dig them up. Here come some last dahlia flower pictures for this year.
   Pooh is the only collarette variety in my collection. It was created by Swan Island Dahlias in US (1998). This dahlia I got from Lilian at the meeting of Svenska Dahliasällskapet members. When it started to bloom I was impressed by size of the inflorescence ~10 cm.

Pooh

   Hillcrest Suffusion (Jackson, UK) is a nice decorative ball of warm peachy-pink color, freely flowering.

Hillcrest Suffusion

   The latest to flower was Black Jack (Haslhofer, Austria, 2003). It's definitely worth to wait. It's the darkest dahlia I've seen, almost black. It has dark leaves as well. Very special blooms.

Black Jack

Preparations for winter started

   

   Warm and rainy September is over and October is cooling the garden. No frost so far and dahlias are still vividly blooming. Fuchsias were flowering amazingly during past few weeks. They were happy for cooler temperatures and flowers were opening huge, especially Bella Rosella. On the title photo taken today morning the flowers are as large as a big apple.

   Anyway it's time to prepare fuchsias to winter storage and I'm glad that I did it today. All leaves and green stem parts were pruned. Now they are ready to go to the basement and wait there until next spring.