Yesterday we travelled into Central Otago to get some fresh fruit from the orchards but it was such a nice day we continued to Alexandra and had a look at the summer flowers in the town’s public garden. We were enchanted! New Zealand
Gaillardia, Echinacea and Gaura. Photos by Nigel.
Detail of fuzzy bumblebee close-up, sitting on the centre of a gaillardia flower. The petals are mostly red with a generous yellow margin. Very bright flowers!
A mass of big pink-petalled Echinacea flowers with large orange cone-shaped centres.
The fluttery appearance of masses of Gaura flowers, they’re like little butterflies. The flowers are white, light and airy on tall stems and there’s pink bits in there too. Very pretty. Because there are lots of plants with lots of flowers, it’s like a haze of white and pink.
A whole clump of the bright red and yellow Gaillardia flowers, mixed with cute fat buttons of seed heads that have lost their petals.
Linda Leinen’s done wonderful photo+info posts on these, growing as wildflowers.
The Incredible Lightness of Gaura
And an Echinacea I found at Linda’s blog, a yellow one:
Summer’s For Sharing
Text by Liz, photos by Nigel; Exploring Colour (2023)
Exploring Colour 
I love all these bright colors, Liz. They are quite a contrast to the carpet of snow that greeted me this morning, our first snowfall of the winter. 🙂
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Glad you enjoyed the colours, Mike. So that’s late snow for you folk, similar to us the last couple of years. Snow still turns up but late.
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Absolutely enchanting! You’re making me feel that I really miss summer and flowers!
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Summer’s on its way for you (even as here, we enter our last summer month). I guess one just has to go with the flow!
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Too true – just feeling a bit fed up with the cold here, LOL!
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I happened to see a bed of gaura today as I walked down the street and was pleased I had seen it on your blog. I had not heard of them. Thanks. They look delightful!
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That’s so nice to know Moya, thank you. I’ll be able to share one or two more gaura photos so I’ll do that in some future blog-post 🙂
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div>Bless your heart, nice to hear there will be more. I usually look
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Beauties all around, Liz. You’ve brought some sunshine to a dreary, raw day here. Echinacea has always been a favorite of mine, and that explosion of Gaillardia is something.
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How nice to think we’ve brought light to a dismal day, and all the way from NZ. It’s all brightness and light in our part of NZ 🙂
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You sure did! I’m so happy you are enjoying summer’s bounties, Liz, and I know our turn will come.
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Yes.. your turn will come! My next post, to go up shortly, will be “Hips meet Blue Bloods” (!)
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What terrific fun, to see some of my favorite natives thriving in your world! We’ve gone back into cold and wet, so it’s nice to be reminded of what’s yet to come when spring and summer truly arrive. Like you, I enjoy seeing mixed Gaillardia flowers and seedheads. The Echinacea are interesting. I think they must be a cultivar of some sort, since I’ve never seen any with such dome-shaped centers, except in photos from gardeners. They’re quite pretty.
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Fun for me too Linda! I remembered your blog-posts and talked to Nigel about them even while we were looking at the lovely flowers 🙂
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It looks wonderful.
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Thanks, a good day in summer in such a gift! You may have heard they’ve got awful flooding up north in Auckland. We’re a long way south of there and it’s not touching us.
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Yes, I heard. Flooding in Auckland. We stayed in Auckland many years ago, at the start and end of our trip to NZ. I hope all is settling down now.
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Actually, Nigel was just telling me about how they’re due for another lot of rain 😦
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Oh no!
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