Birth Flower for July - Delphinium (Larkspur)

This month the flower in the spotlight for birth flower of the month, is the Delphinium or Larkspur as it is also known as in the US.

The Delphinium represents levity and lightness, feelings of love and an open heart.

Delphiniums, despite their stature, are quite delicate in nature. Their perfume is subtle and their blooms can be easily marked by the lightest touch of rain.

I think plant breeders love them, as this one with its iridescent flashes of purple on the blue is quite striking but looks quite unnatural.

Apart from my love of them, they are also adored by slugs and snails and need to be protected from them, from the minute they appear in the soil in spring right through until they finish flowering.

After visiting this beauty in a garden this year, I have been inspired to buy a couple from the garden centre. I shall have to be on my guard though next spring, if I want to see them in all their glory next year but it's definitely a plant worth the trouble and slug pellets.

Upton Country Park Walled Garden

Since a child, I have been enthralled by walled gardens. I loved the paintings in the Ladybird book Rapunzel, of the fabulous rows of flowers and vegetables in the forbidden garden and I loved the children's programme The Herbs and all the goings on behind the gate.

Upton Country Park, a 100 acre award winning woodland and garden, is not 10 minutes from where I live in Poole and has the most wonderful walled garden. Restored in 2012, it originally provided fruit and vegetables for the house, an impressive Georgian grade II listed building.

Around two sides of the parameter, are two avenues of herbaceous borders and inside the sides are lined with more herbaceous borders and a tea room.

I've yet to see the fountain in the middle in use but it looks fantastic fun for the children to run through.

Early this morning, not long after it had opened, I had the joy of walking in solitude and to photograph the plants - a simple pleasure, although I could hear the faint sound of school children visiting the woodland in the distance, they gave me long enough on my own, to get up close and personal with the plants and to enjoy and photograph their beauty before the moment was gone.