Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Photos of gardens....., 1 by beckygardener

beckygardener wrote:
Rox - Your garden is so peaceful looking. I love the rock border! What a great idea!!! Your pink hollyhocks are gorgeous. If you get seeds from them, I'd love a few to try to grow some in my yard. Do they prefer shade or sun? You seem to have some nice shade in your garden. I need to plant a few more trees. It's hot, hot, hot in my gardens every summer. Even my most heat tolerant plants look wilted by August. :-(

Those are not RR ties, but instead treated 2" X 8" X 8 ft. long lumber. My yard is sloping due to building codes. They build each residential lot up like a small hill with a house at the top to prevent flooding issues during heavy storms (hurricanes). That way it keeps the water from coming in under our doors. My yard is a nightmare to plant beds in. I used the wood to try to slow down the erosion of my backyard and to section off the garden beds. I can't put a greenhouse, a sitting area, a garden shed, or anything else back there unless I build a deck for it or level it off somehow. Everything is on a slope. It takes twice to three times the work to do anything with the yard.

Last year I planted a herb garden. Many of the herbs - particularly the mints - looked pretty much died out by the end of Fall. Well, here it is late Spring and that 3-tiered herb garden is almost totally filled in with mints and all kinds of other herbs! I didn't have to plant anything this year. All the plants came back twice as thick! That's always a surprise to me! LOL And my purple aster have come back! Yay!!! I am learning not to dig up anything and toss it because I think it's dead. Give it 6 months and see what happens. Amazing!!!

AND ..... my Trumpet Creeper vine under the bird feeder has looked dead for about 4-5 months. Guess what???? It's BACK!!! LOL Gotta move that puppy into a container before it gets growing too much. Makes me worried what it was doing underground all this time. (Eek!)

Here's a photo of my herb garden up close. When I water it, all you can smell is this amazing aroma of spices and herbs! Makes me hungry whenever I smell all those scents!!! Ha,ha! The plant with the yellow flowers on the right is Tarragon. It smells like licorice.