Spring Garden Flowers

Here are some flowers from Dorothy and Bernie's garden taken on the First of September.

The "Flowering Quince" (Chaenomeles "Winter Cheer") is always an eye-catcher, despite its sharp thorns. I grew up with this plant. It was known to my Mother as "Japonica" - a preposterous name, suggesting that it was the only flower the Japanese grew. My mother loved to use it in her "japanese-style" flower arrangements - heavily trimmed, and stuck onto a pin block in an angular-shaped shallow black saucer.
The simple beauty of flowering Plum Blossom (from a so called "Common or Garden" fruiting Plum) is often overlooked. They are gorgeous in their simplicity. The flowers also have a beautiful sweet perfume, carrying on the warm breeze.
Here is a somewhat garish orange Calendula flower. Impossible to ignore, although orange is my least favourite colour. The flowers on the humble Hebe shrub makes a pretty image. The green leaves balance the deep magenta-purple flowers.The purplish flowers of the Perennial Wallflower (Cheiranthus mutabilis) flower for such a long time in the garden that it is a wonderfully reliable and productive garden flower. I last wrote about this plant in the dead of winter. Now the flowers have a fresh blush of colour - more pinkish than amber and bronze.Here is a stand-out image - a perfect bud of the pink form of Magnolia stellata. A lovely plant.