Hello from Finland! We were off last week, enjoying Juhannus, but we weren’t completely absent! Rosie Amber featured our garden in her Enchanting Gardens series last Sunday! Thanks again, Rosie! 🙂

Another week, and we’re bone dry here. Rain has been falling, but the scattered thunderstorms are so sporadic and short-lived as to be completely useless towards meaningful rain totals. I feel defeated, overwhelmed, and extremely exhausted. I’ve pulled the tags on a couple items this week – 86’d/dead/done/goners – what a shame and a waste. Rain is in the forecast, once again today through the week – let’s hope THIS time we actually get some measurable rain! On an uplifting head-banging, toe-tapping note, downtown Lohja filled with locals Thursday for a free concert by the 2023 Eurovision fan favorite, 2nd place winner, and Finland’s very own KÄÄRIJÄ – Cha cha cha your way to his video if you want to get uplifted with a catchy tune that will have your toe tapping in seconds!

Since the end of May was very cool, I thought for sure the peony displays would be postponed. Nope. Despite not getting a substantial drink in months, and with hot temps through most of June, the peony displays started popping right on cue. The blooms haven’t lasted as long as they might have done, during milder weather. What can you do! I enjoyed the show, and it’s still going on, as we have so many late season bloomers. I’m guessing we have another two weeks of blooms to enjoy before this year’s peony bloomfest has ended for this year.

One of the beds we have a whole slew of peonies in was reshaped last autumn and is now a lot longer than it had been. Due to the increased size, I can EASILY add 6 more peonies to the 6 that were already there. The string of 12 peonies will be extremely lovely. Now I just have to decide which ones to add!! Any favorites you can suggest? These are what we already have. What’s Growing at Vanha Talo Suomi

I go through a 1 cubic meter load of mulch pretty fast. Despite carting in 22 cubic meters of mulch so far, there’s still several beds that need it, plus the tail end of the big border is only halfway done. I’d say 15 more cubic meters will probably get us finally finished. It’s hard to imagine nearly 30 cubic meters, will get put down this season. I can tell you that it really needed it, and the beds that are done look fab. Luckily, this work will mean the next couple of seasons we won’t have to do any mulch runs! Yippee!!

We have a large tour group arriving by bus in early August – I’m hoping the mulch keeps coming, so I can get all the beds topped up in time for all of our garden visitors.

There are several lovely items to share this week. I would like to share some of the roses, but to be honest, some of them are looking pretty tatty. We have a severe issue with sawfly larvae decimating leaves on some roses just now. No issues on any of the Rugosas of course as those are just warriors in the garden. Cold hardy, flower in multiple colors, and several of ours rebloom. Teas, Floribundas, Grandifloras, and the English roses are the prime targets for the sawfly larvae I’ve noticed. Any other year, and I would have caught it sooner, and despatched the little buggers. But, being on mulch duty week after week, those slimy *&%*”&* have just had a field day while I wasn’t looking! UGH!! I’m looking forward to all the hydrangeas coming into flower. I think we have 200 now, so when they start blooming it uplifts the entire landscape. The hydrangea spectacle will hopefully distract us from our tatty roses!

One

Peony ‘First Arrival’

Not really the first to arrive, but when it does, OMG! What a stunner!

Two

Peony ‘Old Faithful’

A true, striking red. Clean and just lovely. This is a young plant, so it is delighting us with a single flower this year. 🙂

Three

Peony ‘Ursinow’

Wow. I love, love, love this peony. Every individual flower is slightly different in the way the petals develop and take shape through the bloom. The blooms are large, and the stems are sturdy. But again, this plant isn’t very old, and was stunning with over a dozen bud stems.

Four

Himalayan Birch

I gave the birchbark some attention this spring – just helped slough off some of the old peeling bark. It has a stark white trunk, you can see it from quite a distance away. I think it’s taking its time settling in, despite being planted several years ago. One of these days I’m gonna look over there at it, and it will be huge! For now, its quietly bring a calming touch to this part of the garden.

Five

One end of that peony bed I mentioned earlier is capped off with Geranium ‘Max Frei’. These are several plants which not too long ago were little fist-sized plants. Give them a sunny spot and now look at ’em!

Peonies in view: on the left is Angelika Kauffman and on the right is Boule de Niege

Six

Our shady corner has a large round bed in front of it which is filled with a mixture of shade-loving plants. Martagon lily ‘Album’ sits next to a huge mass planting of Rodgersia. Sorry lily bud for cutting your head bud off in the photo!

Well, that’s it for us this week. Do drop in to see other fantastic gardens and the fine folk who post on the Six on Saturday garden theme. Whether via blog, Twitter, Facebook – and a few other social media platforms -you’ll find the posts which start hitting newsfeeds early Saturday morning through the entire day.

Happy Gardening everyone! Until next time ❤