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Phlox

It marks the beginning of the holidays; the definitive end of the first phase of summer: the moment when fruit starts to ripen, red berries hang on the rowan and autumn, however distant, is where we are heading. It marks it with a different scent; a spicy warm smell remotely like an Indian kitchen. Agapanthus is opening buds like little onions on their long stalks, Japanese anemone spreading pink daisy-faces, crocosmias arching flowers like fiery dragons. Simplest of all, most profuse and most fragrant, come the domed corymbs of almost babyish flowers of the border phlox, Phlox paniculata.

We inherited clumps of ‘White Admiral’ at Saling nearly 40 years ago. Their flowering is our mid-summer marker. The clumps have spread inexorably, providing enough for other borders, for friends and neighbours, easily established in any soil. They droop a bit in drought; sometimes die back slightly in brown patches late in the season with what I imagine is eel-worm attack, but hold their position of central importance as the borders regroup for late summer.

This pale lilac cultivar flowers just before ‘White Admiral’. It is common enough, but I’ve never been certain of its name. Perhaps you can tell me.

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