The flower beds have pretty much reached confluence and the garden is a mass of colour despite the slugs. Aquilegias (Granny’s bonnet) in pink, white, blue and purple, singles and doubles, are at their peak. They seed around freely (cross pollinating with gay abandon) and most have arrived here from my neighbours’ gardens. But you can have too much of a good thing and I must get rid of some of them, when flowering is over before they set seed again.
I did plant some very decorative double hybrids of Aquilegia vulgaris – “Adelaide Addison” (blue and white), “William Guinness” (purple and white) and “Nora Barlow”, an old-fashioned variety with flowers in cream, pink and green.
Tiny Aquilegia flabellata var. pumila (blue and white), only 6 inches tall, grows in my rock bed as does Aquilegia grahamii (red and yellow), which is a little bigger.