In a Vase on Monday: Hare

Last week I read the book ‘Raising Hare’ by Chloe Dalton, and it was such a lovely read. I really can recommend it. Around the same time as reading it we realized we had hares visiting the garden again. They have been keeping themselves well-hidden recently so we were really pleased to see them (even if one of them promptly devoured a newly planted cumin plant!). So my vase today has a hare theme.

My hare vase always seems appropriate when I include flowers from the meadow. In this case one of these is the lovely Queen Anne’s Lace that has just started to open.

The pale blue/lilac flowers are Campanula lactiflora ‘Prichard’s Variety’ from the Moon Bed. Although this campanula is not the one known as a harebell, I still like to think of those little bell-shaped flowers ringing. The creamy scabiosa are S. ochroleuca, and the larger ones are Cephalaria gigantea… only distinguishable in size, although the plants look completely different. I also added one each of the white and the blue Scabiosa perfecta.

Other meadow flowers are the yellow stems of bedstraw in the background, and wild Achillea in the foreground, as well as some white chamomile flowers with their distinctive yellow centres. I am certain the hares like all of these native plants. The final flourish was a stem of white Gaura (on the right), a few sprigs of lavender and some silver Artemisia ludoviciana ‘Silver Queen’ foliage. (The Artemisia is terribly invasive but also very pretty, and extremely heat and drought proof, so I allow it to return in gaps and pull bits up at intervals!)

Hope everyone in Europe is coping with/has recovered from the heatwave. We have just a couple more days of it, coupled with thunderstorms. Let’s just hope they bring us some much needed rain!

Many thanks to Cathy at Rambling in the Garden for inviting us to share our flowers each week.

Take care and happy gardening!