Planting Combinations for June

Towards the end of June my garden is coming into its own. The moment arrives when the Campanula lactiflora ‘Loddon Anna’ starts to flower, lifting the back border from its tapestry of green to something fuller and more complete. The campanula’s sun-faded pink flowers (the colour of old ladies’ knickers I remember reading once) are softened by a semi-transparent veil of Stipa gigantea. Towering at about 1.5m tall, these campanulas have quite a lot of greenery underneath their soft clouds of flowers so it’s a good idea to plant other things in front to break up that green mass, perhaps something airy like Ammi majus or a tall geranium such as ‘Rozanne’. Throw in a buttony flower like Knautia macedonica and a spire or two of verbascum and you start to create a dynamic picture with different shapes and textures.