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Faith S
Perpetually learning gardener
Alabama, USA
Worth the wait5 Mar '07 6:22 am
Oh Jack, your description of the coolness of the evening in the Rosemary Border was well worth the wait. Again, your photos are overflowing with color and beauty. I vote for Helenium also, but another possibility might be Coreopsis. I grew one last year that looked very similar to this. The Verbascum foliage was the most unusual I have ever seen; almost made the flowers inconsequential.
I'm glad you are back with us to bring your wonderful insights. I really like your thinking about the weeds among the borders. So often the weeds will mimic similar plants nearby, almost as if they know they must blend in to survive, so they are easily overlooked anyway. Toward the end of the season, I find it is easier to be a little near-sighted when viewing my borders (or as Moosey often puts it to tour the garden sans glasses).
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Liza
gardening consultant
Waterloo, Belgium
5 Mar '07 7:53 am
Oh! How I love ALL these brilliant coloured jewels, Jack! I loved that blue beauty(!), who is she? -- 7th photo from the top, after your dogies --- and the Browallias together with those adorable red Penstemons(?)!! Who is choosing the plants and coloures to be planted in the Rosemary Borders?? Are they selfseeded? They are such enchanting combinations!
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Jack Holloway
Passionate Gardener
SEQUOIA FARM Haenertsburg South Africa
My wonderful colour planning...5 Mar '07 8:17 am
Thank you all for your comments. It is good to be sharing again.
I wish, Liza, that I could claim that organising all that beauty was my work - but I can't. The lower border is entirely from scatterpacks - i.e. bags of mixed annual seeds to cover 10m2. I knew which I was choosing, but I also know that one has no control really over the overall effect. The upper border I planned very carefully... but to be honest I wonder if any of my photos of the Rosemary Borders have ever included a colour effect or combination orchestrated by me. Overall schemes, basic colours used - yes: but I have spent hours marvelling - and then photographing - how nature managed to combine exactly the right colours, contrasting or at times identical, in different adjacent plants. It has been a source of immense pleasure to me to know I created the opportunity for the beauty - but the beauty itself... no. There I am a humbly overawed spectator.
Oh and the blue flower is the cornflower, Centaurea cyanus, one of my favourite flowers and one of the reasons I love scatterpacks!
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jacqueline
Thankful Gardener
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
6 Mar '07 2:13 am
Dear Jack, thank you lots for sharing all those fabulous pics of your plants and dogs! What a multitude of wonderful colours and lovely plants! I love them all as much as I love reading what you've written! Your style of writing and presentation always impress me! 
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Bambi
Slowly Learning Gardener
Kent, England
7 Mar '07 3:02 am
Jack, I can't stop here for long as I'm on hubby's computer at home which I don't normally use but I'm being a bit naughty  coz I couldn't resist firstly thanking you once again for another gorgeous show of pictures and secondly making an attempt at the prize of this latest "guess the flower" competition!
When I saw your "Floating Perfection" photo, I immediately ran downstairs to my seed packets and, lo and behold, the flowers look identical to some French Marigolds, Naughty Marietta, that I sowed earlier today!! The stems may be taller perhaps, but this is my guess anyway! 
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Bambi
Slowly Learning Gardener
Kent, England
8 Mar '07 3:23 am
Hee hee, you're right, Liza, it is a rather funny name isn't it? Rest assured, that isn't the reason I bought these seeds (well, not the main reason anyway  ) - I'm planning on planting them with my tomatoes as I read somewhere (probably somewhere on this very forum in fact) that French Marigolds deter whitefly; plus I liked the colouring - I've also got some Scarlet Sophies (see below) to intersperse amongst them which I also thought were quite pretty.
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moosey
head gardener
Lovely marigolds8 Mar '07 10:44 am
The marigolds do deter white fly, well I belive they do! And, Bambi, It's such a great reason (if one needs it) to grow lovely bright orangey flowers in the vegetable garden. I've just spent a morning doing some late summer weeding of my vege patch - I've pulled out calendulas, violas, aquilegias, forget-me-nots, marigolds, nicotianas - you get the picture? All self sown. Hee hee.
Liza - I wonder what would happen if Naughty Marietta ever met Sexy Rexy? Oops. Better stop there, before the serial spammers get me! Right. I'm going back outside, my garden is a mess, I am a bigger mess (lost my hairbrush again, have to 'borrow' the dog's brush). Enough! Lots of late summer love, M.
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Faith S
Perpetually learning gardener
Alabama, USA
Messy gardeners9 Mar '07 3:52 am
Sorry Jack, but I can't resist posting a message to Mary on your string. I just read her Garden Journal posting and thought it was so funny. Why? Because it sounded so much like my own self and garden. I have been "flutzing" (my hubby's word)around in my garden all week and havn't yet finished a complete area. I'm so glad we have Mary to lead us and make us take life and ourselves more lightly.
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Dixie
garden enthusiast
Waikato-New Zealand
Mary the leader9 Mar '07 5:13 am
Yes,Mary is a wonderful leader - I love it how she makes a list because it feels so good to cross things off !
Dixie
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