Blooming in the garden

July is a great month for the perennials in the backyard. Over the past couple of years, I just been dividing the flowers and spreading them across the yard. As you can see in the above photo, I have a lot more space to cover. Thanks to Todd's re-landscaping this past spring.
The red flowers above are a perennial favorite of mine called Bee's Balm, and you guessed it, the bees love and flock to this flower. The flowers are past their prime already, but I liked the contract they provide with the hostas, cone flowers and day lilies.
The Ellis Nelson sculpture above balanced the the height of the flowers in this garden bed. There are several sculptures throughout the yard and you can see several of them in the photos.

I really like to work with native flowers for a couple of reasons. One is cost, it's cheaper in the long run to buy the plant once, let it mature and then divide it to put in other spots in the garden. Two, they are tolerant of the summer conditions and can often go without additional watering. While I have my rain barrels now, I don't have enough to water everything.

Well, I'm headed back to the garden to pull weeds, fight the mosquitoes and enjoy the flowers.