Perennial Geraniums

I'm not an expert on the herbaceous geraniums growing in my garden. They are all plants that I've picked out of mail-order catalogues, and forgotten their names soon after planting. I'm embarassed that I've taken perennial geraniums so much for granted.

Mail Order Geraniums

There are so many different varieties - each year I see them in my mail order plant catalogues. I have bought quite a few different geraniums, and tried to plant them in sensible positions, but often they'll get lost in the mass of summer garden growth. Then I never see them again - I often forget that they ever came into my garden. Hmm...

I have established clumps of a white flowering variety of geranium which I can see from the house in late spring. It soon gets straggly, though, and gI trin it back to encourage flowering again.

Geranium Varieties

Further away in the Hen House garden there are patches of pink - all rejects from a friend's garden. I also put up with Geranium phaeum, commonly called Mourning Widow, which I grow in the Apple Tree Garden.

I seem to often be given herbaceous geraniums - another friend proudly gave me her clumps of so-called Johnson's Blue to look after. I wonder if they are frauds (they are seeding everywhere, and I have always thought that Johnson's Blue is sterile).

Anyway, they are filling in space in the Willow Tree Garden while their fate is decided - they certainly put on a great blue flowering display in summer, and again in Autumn after I've chopped them back.