Another walkway update

I look at it all day long through the window, so I don't really get a good sense of how the walkway garden is doing. Sure I see blooms come and go, but I don't notice if specific plants are doing well or not. Are they growing?

So let's take a look at it today!

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First, I should say that overall I'm very pleased with the way this area looks:

If I have any complaint, it's that this has become less of a walkway and more of an obstacle course:

The gaura had decided that it really wants to be in the path, the mallow is starting to droop due to the weight of its blooms (and forming seed heads), and the Artemesia 'Powis Castle' -- well, that simply needs a pruning.

Everything seems to be doing really well though, and the deer are leaving pretty much everything here alone. Yeah!

The only plants that are not doing as well as I expected are the cannas -- they're really growing slowly. Perhaps a bit more fertilizer is required? (no close-up photo -- you can enlarge the last photo of this post for a better look at the dark-leaved cannas)

The combo of the chartreuse sweet potato vine and the purple fountain grass is a winner every time to my eye, and the Agastache rupestris is a must-have -- even though it's difficult to photograph well:

Powis Castle and Sachys (Lambs Ear) -- another combo that is fantastic:

The white butterfly bush is in bloom now, and although it's not as fragrant as others I have, I still love it:

Especially for the butterflies it attracts to the front yard:

What's not to like?

The Lobelia (Cardinal flower) that is still in the whiskey barrel water feature is a beacon:

I won't show the entire plant because it is growing at a strange angle -- the upper growth is too heavy for the rootball so it keeps falling over and is now a curvy-stemmed thing. I need to get this into the ground somewhere...

(Incidentally, as I lowered the camera after taking this photo, a hummingbird arrived and started circling my head. If only I still had the camera in position I would have gotten some great shots, but she flew away when I raised it.)

I added just a couple of Verbena bonariensis up here, plants that I accidentally pulled when weeding beds in the back:

They've both established and although I don't expect much from them this year, I really put them here for the future: I want their seedlings up here from now on!

The Persicaria 'Painters Palette' are starting to fill in now, adding nice contrast to a darker sweet potato vine:

The parent Persicaria plant is not as large as I had hoped, but the seedlings have helped to fill in this area. There's a bit of mint in the pot with the sweet potato vine too.

Although the big plants get all of the attention, there are some nice little ones in here too:

Some Ajuga, Talinum (Jewels of Opar), Tradescantia, Sedum (and an ever-present feverfew seedling that needs to be pulled) add interest to the areas around the larger plants.

And that's your walkway garden update for summer!

(If you want to see what it looked like at the end of June, click here.  What about earlier, in May?)

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