From Ryedale to Holderness

Eryngium alpinum in evening light on Saturday. These are a few pictures from a pleasant weekend of gardening and botanising.

My garden is currently full of flower, colour and interest - I'm very happy with how it looks.

Wharram Quarry is my most local Yorkshire Wildlife Trust reserve: it has an excellent chalk flora, currently in full flower. Masses of Dactylorhiza fuchsii were conspicuous yesterday afternoon.

One of the special plants of Wharram Quarry is the nationally rare Thistle Broomrape, Orobanche reticulata subsp. pallidiflora, which parasitises Woolly Thistle, Cirsium eriophorum.

The reserve was gifted to the YWT to preserve the population of Bee Orchids, Ophrys apifera.

A plant fair today gave an opportunity to visit the gardens of Dalton Hall in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The productive kitchen garden  also has large blocks of  wildflower meadow, curiously with wigwams of sweet peas in each corner, though the mixture of formal and informal was rather pleasing.

The plant fair was merely a diversion on the way to the annual National Garden Scheme opening of the Pottage family's garden at Withernsea - a location that always makes me think it's 'to Hull and gone'.

Cultivated for centuries, but there are still few plants that match the scarlet of Lychnis chalcedonica.

A view across the top of a Hebe cupressoides in the Pottage garden. As always, an enjoyable and educational afternoon there. 

I returned home through a thunderstorm south of the Wolds, and found another had just cleared this side, leaving the garden well washed and watered. Chamaenerion angustifolium 'Stahl Rose'.