Our Small Space Garden Tour of Gorgeous Summer Flowers: Colourful, Stylish, Fragrant, Dreamy Plants.

We're enjoying the presence of two new annuals in the garden this summer, raised here from seed. The first is Ladybird, an adorable poppy with bright glossy petals and irrepressibly cheerful flowers. The black spots on scarlet petals are suggestive of the classic ladybird look, and it also seems to attract actual ladybirds too. We found the quickest way to germinate in March was on a window sill indoors with seeds scattered on the top of constantly moist, fibrous general-purpose peat-free compost rather than seed compost. And this took five days for the first seeds to start germinating. Outdoors in an open container, germination began after ten. One of ladybird's benefits for pollinators is that unlike our perennial Welsh poppies, which close their petals at the end of the afternoon, ladybird stays open for business at all hours. And as so often happens in life, there were a few surprises in the mix. These are typical ladybird poppies, but a couple of seedlings have developed into taller, larger-flowered, double-petal types of poppy. Happily, they are very attractive and perfectly colour-coordinated with ladybird. Cosmos xanthus is another new introduction to the garden this year. Raised from seed on the window sill, they germinate ridiculously quickly, and then after two weeks, we put them outside into the propagator to protect them from frost. They offer a far more understated presence than ladybird, but have plenty of sweetly pretty cottage garden charm, with soft primrose flowers and feathery green furnish. We'll see them with other cosmos cultivars later in this video. To have an abundance of colour and scent in the garden this May and June is a particular joy, because this year was such a frustratingly slow starter, with a reluctant spring after the bitter winter. For most of April, we were wondering anxiously whether the tulip flowers would actually ever appear, but by the start of May, Princess Irene finally hit her stride, and the patio pots were full of joyful tulips with tropical sunset shades and their characteristic sweet, subtle fragrance. In previous years, we've seen them looking fabulous in the cottage garden at Sissinghurst Castle. Vita Sackville-West described this as her sunset garden, and that's exactly what the petal colouring of Princess Irene evokes. These gorgeous tulips are called Blue Amiable. I do keep getting the name wrong, but they're really, really lovely. They start as deceptively simple but elegant purple buds, and then get increasingly interesting with faded, romantic lilac glamour. They're really gorgeous, and we'll definitely add more of these beauties next year. This sweet, shop-coloured Acrolegia has been growing in a pot for about four years. I've completely neglected to feed it, so I think there must be earthworms helpfully fertilising the compost, because it grows well, and flowers throughout May and June. It looks great with bright pink salvias, and we love the combination with Nemesia Banana Swirl, which was just a happy accident, as I bought a couple of blue-flowered Nemesia plants, and this pink and yellow cultivar was amongst them, just not in flower, so I hadn't purposefully selected these colours, but it looks great. Our favourite Allium is Globe Master. We love the way bees just crawl all over this giant, spherical feast, with barely the need to fly from plant to plant. As you can see, they're in pots, and also in the raised beds beyond. They've multiplied over the years, and seem to come up true to form. They don't always reach their full-size potential in containers, but they're still every bit as lovely. And another reason to grow Alliums, as if another reason is necessary, is that they are great for attracting butterflies to the garden. This is the Small Blue, the UK's tiniest resident butterfly. Its underwings are more silvery grey than blue, and the upper wings are dusky coloured. Butterfly identification is quite challenging. This garden visitor looks like the Small Blue, but once it starts flying, the pretty colouring shows it's a holly blue. And this is the Common Blue. Gorgeous Annual Cosmos Rubenza is a perfect pollinator pleaser, with a rich supply of nectar and pollen, and lots of single, open-faced flowers, appearing from June to September. Petals open in a deep, velvety ruby shade that gradually fades to dusky pink, and the more cut flowers you take, the more buds it produces. Cosmos Rubenza and Cosmos Xanthos are as delicious as strawberry jam and clotted Cornish cream. The Perennial Orange Welsh Poppy is another total bee pleaser. These start flowering from April, and over the years they've seeded themselves around the garden, all from one original plant which came from a very dear friend, no longer with us, and who we think of every time we see them. I collect the seed each year, and try to determine the spot that the new plants will germinate and grow. For example, we'd love more orange in this raised bed, to add greater contrast with the purple and blues. But ultimately, the poppy seems to choose for itself where to multiply, and it will always pop up in an unexpected place in the patio, or another pot, and will just be delightful anyway. Another endearing feature is that we often find baby crickets living on them. And they nibble away at the petals, of course, but we don't mind. Not every cricket will make it to adulthood, as the dunnocks and sparrows find them much too tasty, but they are all part of the garden ecosystem, and it's fun to watch them as they mature. Rambling Rector is a vigorous rose with generous heavenly clouds of flowers for bees, perfuming the air through June, and bursts of tiny red hips in autumn. Ours requires no fertilising or watering, but we do have to prune it more than once a year after flowering, as it wants to be a 25-foot rose growing on a 6-foot fence. Nemesia Denim is covered in completely dreamy flowers from early summer through to autumn, and is loved by pollinators large and small. According to the RHS, it's a half-hardy deciduous perennial, so I need to provide more protection this winter, as last year ours didn't survive the threes, and I couldn't bear not to replace them. The flower fragrance is a divine, light, sweet scent. This is Bearded Iris Mère du Sud. Mère du Sud. It has gorgeous, saturated, eye-catching violet-blue flowers in late May and early June. There are little pools of sunlight all over the garden. This is Campanula Dixens Gold, a hardy evergreen, gently spreading perennial, with zingy, limey yellow foliage and soft lilac-blue flowers in early summer. It also provides a great colour and textural contrast with darker evergreens in winter. At first glance, it might not appear to be attracting bees, but a delightful quirk is that there are hidden layers of flowers, and often you see the surface of the leaves twitching, and a bumblebee is burrowing about from bloom to bloom underneath, eventually emerging. And although it thrives best in full sun or part shade, we also grow ours in an area of total shade to create the illusion of pools of light. It will not flower as productively in the shade, but in well-drained soil it seems to tolerate these conditions. Dixens Gold is also really lovely around a pond because slugs and snails live under the ground-covering mass of leaves and provide frogs and toads with readily available snacks. Perennial Salvia Pink Pong is a true gem for patio pots. Ours didn't finish flowering until mid-December last year, and survived a very bitter winter. It did lose all its leaves and about a third of the length of stems died, but I pruned them back to green wood in the spring, and it's regenerated beautifully. I bought another Pink Pong plant from a local nursery this year for, hopefully, even more visiting hummingbird hawkmoths. This Dalmatian Bellflower generously self-seeded into the patio paving years ago. It means we have to access this waterbark from above in early summer, as the flowers are too pretty to disturb. It has also self-seeded in the pebbles under our pretend bonsai pine tree, and has added to the tree's charm. I was totally seduced by a local nursery's description of Folgate Lavender Flowers as appearing almost ultraviolet at dawn and dusk, as the colour appears to lift off the plant. This sounded so enchanting, I forgot to consider the size of this lavender. This is its second summer, and it is relatively compact and not the big, blousy, waist-high path spiller that I had in mind. However, it is indeed the most magical blue, and I can't fault the nursery's description. The white bracts covering the Chinese Dogwood Tree also seem to hover like clouds of butterflies as dusk descends. The glory of the dogwood and the rambling rose will fade as the summer stretches on, but there is the excitement of burgeoning agapanthus buds waiting to set off their summer fireworks. Apples in the tree are beginning to ripen. The shy foxglove spires are starting to climb to the light. Hydrangea flowers are taking on the first blush of colour. A huge thank you to everyone who subscribes to and supports our channel. We hope you'll join us here again later in the summer. Until then, we wish you flowerful times and nature-soothed minds.