Five Favourites, May 2026

Another month has flown by and the month of May has brought us rain at last. With very cold nights, and even a frost recently (and one more to come?) I am surprised daily at the amount of growth. So now it’s time to pick just five favourite things in the garden right now. Let’s get started!

Number One:

Geums

I have a variety of Geums in several beds, and a few are already in flower. Some were grown from seed and missing their labels, but I think this one is ‘Fireball’.

This pale yellow one with nodding flowers is less dramatic…

Geum ‘Tales of Hex’ has (for the second year in a row) proved to be interesting to some creature. A hare? A bird? Several flower stems are broken off clean. Fortunately I found them in time and gathered them up to put in a vase!

But my favourite Geum at the moment is ‘Totally Tangerine’….

It took me a few years to find one here, after seeing it on blogs for probably a decade or so. Now it is widely available though. The light orange stands out well from a distance without being brash.

Number Two:

Euphorbia polychroma

Every spring I love watching it rapidly grow into a lovely mound of lime green with citrus yellow ‘flowers’ forming by May. Most of them are in The ‘Edge and my Herb Bed(!) but I have spread some of the seedlings around to other parts of the garden too and they should be established by next year.

Number Three:

Irises

The Words and Herbs Bed contains mainly fragrant flowers and plants, so I chose fragrant irises for this bed. The first to flower is this lovely Iris germanica ‘October Sun’ that really smells lemony.

This purple one, Iris barbata-elatior ‘Autumn Encore’ is new this year and has a rich spicy odour…

…while Iris barbata-elatior ‘Lovely Again’ is more floral.

The advantage of having wood chip mulch is that I can walk all through this bed and sniff everything! 🤣

Number Four:

Spiraea

While the lovely fragrant Spiraea arguta has gone over, the Spiraea japonica continue to add colour and pizzazz to The ‘Edge, and more recently a pot in the yard.

They seem to stand up to the heat in summer well, but I haven’t grown one in a container before, so we will see. The lime green foliage, tinged with orange and yellow, is gorgeous all year, changing slightly through the seasons. A bonus is the tiny pink flowers in May or June.

Number Five:

Hmmm, hard to decide between the Aquilegias or the various blue flowers starting to open in the Moon Bed… I think I will pick this early Geranium, ‘Sabani Blue’…

The description when I bought this plant said it would flower all summer. Well, it doesn’t. At least it hasn’t so far. And this will be its third summer. But I don’t mind as it puts on such a nice show before the other hardy Geraniums have got going. In April the emerging foliage is a pretty pale green which then turns darker in May. And isn’t that flower colour simply gorgeous?!

So that’s my Five for this month. What is giving you most pleasure in your garden this month? Join me with your Five Favourites if you can, or simply leave a comment below. I love to hear what thrives in other people’s gardens!

Happy Gardening!



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