Summer Garden and Monday Morning Blooms Around the Potting Shed

Happy Monday!

It’s one of my favorite days of the month, when I join my

Monday Morning Blooms’ friends for a little flower therapy!

You can find my flower friends’ links and blooming inspiration at the bottom of this post.

 I’m sharing some summer garden blooms around the Potting Shed

as our common theme for this week’s edition of

Monday Morning Blooms is ‘Outdoors’!

Warning: Photo heavy post ahead, so grab something cool to drink and get comfy. :)

This post contains affiliate links. For more information see my disclosure policy.

Mid-June is peak daylily season in our zone 7b garden!

Daylilies are the unsung hero of the summer garden IMHO.

They bloom repeatedly for years with minimal attention, tolerate a wide variety of soil conditions

and stand up to the summer heat, humidity and are even drought-tolerant!

The daylily’s botanical name, Hemerocallis, means “beauty for a day”

as each bloom only remains open for a single day. Depending on the variety,

the bloom season can last 30 to 40 days or sometimes longer.

Blooming starts in late spring and can continue into early fall.

Flowers appear on stalks called ‘scapes’, with multiple flowers

blooming on a single scape. Each daylily plant has numerous scapes and

can produce hundreds of flowers in a season. To keep the plants looking their best,

snap off the spent flowers, taking care not to break off nearby buds.

Daylilies also attract pollinators, including butterflies, bees and even hummingbirds.

For best results, plant daylilies where they’ll get six hours or more of direct sunlight each day.

Daylilies will grow in partial shade, but produce fewer flowers.

Daylilies will grow for many years with little attention,

but will produce more flowers if they are divided about every 5 years.

Divide daylilies after the plants have finished blooming in late summer or early fall.

The Potting Shed window boxes were planted with an assortment of sun-loving annuals in April.

The colorful foliage of the coleus will be bright and showy through September,

after the petunias are spent and fade.

I’ve had several readers ask about the fertilizer I use for my window boxes.

Miracle-Gro Bloom Booster is my ‘go-to’ fertilizer for summer annuals and containers.

It’s around $6 for a 1.5 lb. box and available at most garden centers.

I apply it every two weeks to my containers and window boxes starting in the spring,

upping the frequency to every 7 days during the heat of summer when I’m

watering more frequently, to help ‘boost the bloom’!

A friend surprised me this fun vintage-inspired ‘Hometown Florist’ sign for my birthday!

I placed it on my bench for a little flower fun with a decorative birdhouse and garden blooms.

A Flower Market Galvanized Metal Bucket from MacKenzie-Childs was also birthday gift!

It came with a lid and a scoop and is generously sized so it can hold potting soil,

gardening supplies or bird seed.

It’s serving as a big bucket of garden blooms. . .

Endless Summer Hydrangeas, Daylilies, Verbena,

Butterfly Bush and Chaste Tree blooms.

I cut a few Popcorn Drift and single rose blooms to join the hydrangeas and daylilies.

And this decorative birdhouse is blooming with a single rose too. :)

Butterfly bush is blooming and living up to its name,

attracting butterflies as well as bees.

Butterfly Bush is as controversial as the spelling of its name, Buddleja or Buddleia, originating in China.

As non-native species are, they can be invasive-> (I’m looking at you, Chinese Privet),

and are even banned in some states in the U.S.

When selecting a butterfly bush, choose a hybrid variety that is sterile to keep it from spreading.

You can read more about the Great Butterfly Bush Debate, here.

What’s not controversial is the Butterfly Bush’s appeal to both butterflies and bees!

I went inside to take a look at my photos and came back to find an Easter Tiger Swallowtail

had fluttered over, attracted to the pinkish-purple flower cones.

A bumble bee buzzed over, attracted the Chaste Tree blooms and Verbena.

Visit my talented blogging friends to see their beautiful ‘outdoor’ floral inspiration this week:

Pam at Everyday Living

 Shirley at Housepitality Designs

Lidy at FrenchGardenHouse

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 Between Naps on the Porch