Mid- summer is the height of beauty for a traditional English garden. June is the month of busting pastel shades and heady scents, the breaded Irises have a few splashes left, dripping wisterias hang heavy with purple racemes and the full nodding heads of pink and magenta peonies exude summer richness, but it is the rose in it’s full unbridled glory that takes the garden to heavenly heights.

Now is the time of year when even the hardiest of garden cynics can not help but have their heart melted by the profusion of colour, and perfume.

Even a short stroll to work or school will take you past front gardens over-flowing with an abundance of mid-summer charm. Carpets of pink and purple hardy ground cover geraniums, banks of green foliage and trumpets of yellow and orange day lilies, climbing roses skirting their way round door frames, and heady honey suckle tumbling over fences.

Garages and sheds disappear under a riot of sugar pink clematis and shocking pinks of rambling roses intend on covering all before them. Window boxes are crammed with geraniums, which tumble forth in frothy scarlets and pinks and Pub fronts drip in vivid hanging baskets that gently sway in the summer breeze.

Who could not be in love with the great out doors in June, whether enjoying a pint of Harveys on a summer evening in the pub garden or having a tea time picnic in Grange gardens or just peaking over the fence to admirer the fruits of someone else’s hard labours.

By Emily Blake-Dyke