they are fairly long, the days of wallflowers and roses

The perennial wallflower Erysimum 'Bowles Mauve' is still in bloom, and has been continuously since I planted a group of three exactly three months ago.  By now the flowering stems are a good 45cm long, the lower parts bare except for the skinny remains of the old flowers, which I rather think are sterile and won't set seed.  However, on top of each spike is still a goodly number of flowers, with buds at the tip promising still more to come.  A long, mostly bald stem with a tuft of flowers on the end of it doesn't sound very attractive, but there are so many stems that from any distance the group of three plants is covered in a generous haze of blooms, and you don't notice or worry about the stalks.

The individual flowers are small, just a centimetre across, or a shade more.  They have four petals, for wallflowers are Cruciferae, along with cabbages and turnips, and the name derives from the same origin as cross or crucifix, implying a four-part arrangement.  Nowadays botanists have renamed the family Brassicaceae.  The colour is a light aubretia mauve, while the buds are dark purple.  The open flowers have a green eye.  There are some attractive mauve and apricot bicolour Erysimum in commerce, but 'Bowles Mauve' has no hint of yellow in it, beyond the green centre.  The leaves are an agreeable greyish green.  My plants were quite small when they went in, no more than 15cm across, and have grown considerably in the last three months, making bushy mounds.  The RHS in their plant selector say that 'Bowles Mauve' requires neutral or alkaline soil, but these are on acid sand.  Who knows, they may not grow as large or live as long as the RHS says they can, but they would be worth planting even if they only lasted the season, given they make a good show so quickly.

The perennial wallflowers are not generally long lived plants, and not especially cold tolerant.  Although mine have got the good drainage they prefer, I ought to take cuttings later in the summer instead of relying on being able to buy some more next year if needed.  They are great plants for anybody starting a new garden or border, given that you get rapid growth and lots of flowers early on, and if they die in a few years when their neighbours are starting to take up more space then that's fine, and saves you the painful choice of deciding what to remove.

Near them in the replanted long bed, the roses that were supposed to be 'Hot Chocolate' have settled down as the drought eased, and are blooming in their expected shade of burnt amber, so it seems that I have got the right variety, and the earlier dark red flowers with irregular white margins were aberrant, caused by the response of young plants to unusually hot and dry conditions.  They look good near the Erysimum, soft purple and orange-brown setting each other off nicely.  They aren't strictly complementaries, but getting that way.