The sweet smell of summer

           A sample of self-seeded phlox' variety

Tall Garden Phlox has taken over the front beds of my house and are starting to make inroads into the other areas of my yard as well.  For years I neglected deadheading the phlox I inherited from the previous owners, and since they aren't very fussy about where they will grow, they now outnumber any of the other perennials in my yard (not including the weeds, of course!)

Now I religiously deadhead them but I do it with regret because phlox are really into "loving thy neighbor" and over the years my palette of phlox blooms went from a medium purple to a wild mix of lavender blue, white, white/pink, pink, bright pink, a range of heights, and slightly different flower shapes and sizes.  All because I added a 'David,' 'Red Riding Hood', and several 'Laura' phlox after I found out how fragrant phlox are.  Now I look forward to seeing what any new phlox plant will look like when it blooms.

And the fragrance once they do bloom is lovely!  I really love walking out my front door and having that vanilla wall of smell envelope me.  Nice!

The other thing I love about phlox is that the butterflies, sphinx moths and hummingbirds love them too.  I can sit and watch all the pretty fluttery critters out there working over the flowers right outside my picture window.

What I don't love is the powdery mildew that goes along with phlox, but we had pretty consistent rain here this summer so the plants didn't really get water-stressed thus I didn't see much mildew. 'David' is my latest blooming phlox so I will get to enjoy the show well into mid-September. Yay!

All of these white phlox are self-seeded 

Red Riding Hood is one of 3 cultivars I actually planted-it got bad reviews in the Chicago Botanic Garden trials for poor mildew resistance but I've never had a problem in my yard with this one. (Knock on wood)