Absolutely loved the tour. Out of curiosity, what is the tent house? A greenhouse?
Also, I have put Christmas balls around my garden, is that what we are seeing?
So wonderful. Thank you sharing. Very inspirational.
Christi
My Cottage Garden as Pictured Today :)
Great slideshow! Love your new garden area! Looks like your young helpers really did a great job! Thanks for sharing how you did it! :-)
Christi, The "tent house" is a Sam's club garage they sell.. it is large enough to house one car. We use it to keep the John Deere and firewood covered as well as many toys.. bags that need to stay dry and it houses other various things that find there way in there. I have walked miles from that tent to the garage to the basement and back looking for tools! :)
Yes, after Christmas, the stuff that was marked down over 90% were not Christmas colors and unusual for that season..or made of plastic and not what people wanted. Since I always have my garden in mind, I snatched them up for yard art for my shade garden.
Thanks Becky :)
Tuesday Morning had the glass/etched globes in several sizes for tree ornaments and I couldn't resist scattering here and there. They are clear but colored just slightly.
Great minds run on the same track. hahahah
Christi
I really love your style. Such beautiful photos.
Love your garden! I just have one question. How do you gals keep up with your seeds? Can I see your seeds filing system?
Thanks Eden :)
Lili... I keep it as simple as possible.. if they are perennials and I can direct sow them I just spread them right then and there and save the work of collecting and bagging.. We are so far south that it works just fine. For annuals I just paper bag and label with a marker and into a huge shoebox or bag they go.. Nothing fancy.
I've put photo albums onto photobucket now.. haven't taken any lately.. busy.. but here's one and you can click your way around to my others :)
http://s204.photobucket.com/albums/bb196/soulgardenlove/Late%20June%20Blooms/?albumview=slideshow
:)
Susan
Very pretty Susan. I just love your garden. And your children are so cute! What is the red flower that you have that looks like a star? It's a photo right in between your luna swirl and white hibiscus (may be white luna). I guess you have so much plants that you don't need to put down pine straws. How do you keep the weeds away because your garden does not look weedy. And I want mine to look like that!
Susan, I need to look through to see if I can get a better picture of your flower bed with the red hibiscus. I started a Texas Star Hibiscus and now I need to plant it into the ground. Trying to decide where and what to plant around it.
Soulgardenlove: Love your garden and your fairy bird bath statue. Where on earth did you find her?
soulgardenlove
What is your secret t such beautiful roses? I have Don Juan, for years now and love it not only for it's beauty but it's fragrance.
Beautiful gardens, soulgardenlove! Your brugmansias give me a severe case of zone envy.
Ohhhh, Susan! Boy, do I have garden envy! So many beautiful flowers! I can't wait til my gardens are like yours! I also loved the wire rooster art...I collect chickens and roosters. I'm even thinking about getting some live chickens! A friend of mine wants to give me some of theirs. Now all I have to do is convince DH!
JoAnn
Lili, that is an early blooming dahlia. I must put down a mulch, I prefer leaf mold, or else i get tons of weeds..just like everyone else. it's creative photography.. trust me, there are weeds! :) I have Texas Star hibiscus blooming now in both white and red. Need to find a few early morning minutes this week to take some pictures out there.
Hemo and JoAnn, I got that bird bath fairy statue and the Rooster at Hobby Lobby.. Do you have that store nearby? Try there:) The summer stuff may be gone.. but they get in lots of great stuff each spring. I talked to my husband about getting some live chickens after visiting a relatives farm and he had to talk some sense into me about where we live and how it just wouldn't fly here! Oh well....
Trouble, my secret is great soil and lots of horse manure :)
Kayly, the brugs are gone in front of the fence and I'm still reworking the front garden beds this year. Took them out and want different plants there :) I did enjoy them though.. Just got too big. I call it creative destruction!
:)
Susan
Sougardenlove, thanks for the info. We do have a Hobby Lobby and I will check it out. I'm always on the lookout for fairies and fairy-related objects.
Yes, the brugs do get big. My next door neighor has one. It's 3 year old now and it's well over 10ft this year! We are talking about a plant that die down completely in the winter and come back in the spring and it's that tall! I don't know how I'm going to get the seeds off that sucker! Hopefully, some of the lower branches will have blooms too. I thought I remember reading somewhere that if you have those little leaves in the crevice, that's where you're going to get bloom/bud. I can't seem to find that link, I looked at a bunch of thread the other day. I know nothing about brugs!
Our Hobby Lobby here is fantastic and they have great summer clearance - 75-90% off. The only thing is, they are not open on Sunday, just like Chick-Fil-A. I think it's kind of a nice thing to do for their employees.
I germinated my Texas Star from seeds earlier this year. Do you think it's OK to put it in the ground now, or should I keep it in a container over the winter. I know it's hardy for our region. What do you have planted around your Texas Star? I thought I remember some small white flowers next to yours. Mine is red.
Susan,
Yes, we do have a Hobby Lobby over in Athens, about a 15 minute drive from here. I've been in there twice and just love it! My DH has to drag me out of there kicking and screaming and clawing the ground! The first time went in there we spent 3 hours looking at everything.
LiliMerci, I just bought 4 brugs after seeing a couple homes in the Athens area with them in their yards. In one yard they are mostly in the shade and in another yard they are in the sun and both ways they seem to be doing fine. Mine are still in their pots and about 8-10" tall. Would you suggest I plant them in sun or shade? I have clay here....should I amend the soil? If so, what kind of soil do they like? I guess I ought to look up brugs in the DG Plant Files! ;-)
JoAnn
I was wondering how to handle my Texas Star (Hibiscus) that I started from seeds. I'm afraid of putting it in the ground too early and they won't make it through the winter. Is it too late now? Should I keep it in container the first year?
I'm going to post same question on Hibiscus thread.
JoAnn - I highly recommend amending your soil in the area you are going to plant your Brugs. They are heavy feeders.
LiliMerci - I grow my Texas Star Hibiscus in a pot (with no drain holes). It likes lots of moisture. Even with our mild winters, they don't always make it here because of the droughts we get off and on. If you grow it in a pot, let it go dormant and then just store in a sheltered place. Mine stays in water year round. If it freezes or dries out, it will die. That's been my experience...
I didn't know it goes dormant in the winter. Will it die off completely to the ground? Or does the leaves just fall off and leave you with the branches?
LiliMerci - It will die completely to the ground and send up new shoots and trunk when the growing season starts.
Thanks. Good to know.
I planted my Texas Hibiscus seed in a starter pot then transplanted it when just a few inches tall after we moved in. It grew a few feet from May until it died off to the ground and came back this year about 4' high and has about 4 or 5 buds on it. The area it is planted is on the shady side of the house most of the day, but gets the late afternoon and evening sun. It could probably use more light than that, but it's doing OK. It's the only place around the house where the soil was amended prior to us moving here. The pink hardy hibiscus is planted in the same area, but grew much fuller and taller than the Texas Hib.
JoAnn
JoAnn - I had mine grown from seed in a pot last year. Small plant. Then I dumped it in one of those plastic ice cream buckets filled with water. I did add some MiracleGro fertilizer once and it bloomed like crazy for me! LOL! All I know is that the Texas Hibiscus love having wet feet. :-) And mine is still sitting in water. LOL!
OK. I posted a photo of my proud plant on the seed germination post and someone has informed me that I don't have a Red Star/Texas Star Hibiscus because of their unique leaves. Now, I don't know what mystery plant that I have.
These are the seeds a neighbor gave me, so I don't know what they could be...
I started mine in place from seed and I seem to remember thinking that I had leaves that didn't look like they should.... leave it alone and let it grow. if the leaves looked like they should at such a young age, it would look like you were growing something illegal :0. I think it matures into the illegal lookalike leaf!
:)
Susan
LOL! I did go back and look at those leaves again and they do look like those illegal plant. I'm curious to know how one can tell the difference.
For those of you following this thread, I had a fire this summer :( and we are rebuilding :) Pictures and thread here : http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1064693/
Susan
Susan - {{{Hugs}}} I am soooo sorry to read and see the photos of what happened to you lovely home! Rebuilding is hard task, but when it is done, you will sit back, take a big sigh of relief, and move on with your lives.
I haven't had a house fire, but our home was devastated in 2004 by Hurricane Frances and Jeanne. It took almost a year to completely repair it and have life back to normal. But ... that is when I started gardening!!! I was helpless to do anything to the inside of our home, so I decided I needed to do something for my sanity sake and I started putting in garden beds and planting seeds and plants around the yard. And the rest is history! LOL! So something good did come out of my own home devastation. And ... my dream was to have hummers come to my yard. Not as commonn as up North. Well, guess what? I now have a year-round resident female hummer who "guards" my yard! LOL! So good did come from my own personal challenge.
Something good will come of yours, too! Hang in there! Wishing you a speedy rebuild and an even more beautiful and functional home than before the fire, because now is the time to make additions or changes to your original floor plan. :-)
Oh my, what beauty you have created in your landscape and flowerbeds! Love the butterflies on the children's playhouse or is that your storage shed? That copper or bronze garden angel is beautiful! Do you keep birdseed in her basket or apron? Do you know the color/variety of your lantana? Those colors would fit right in with my proposed cottage garden look for my flowerbeds in 2010. Yellow shrimp plant/aka lollipop plant is unique and certainly does look like some man dancing! I wrote down that website and might just have to order me one or two of those plants. Your Four O'clocks..are they all that beautiful color? Most are a variety of colors on same plant that I've ever seen. I had a Josephine brand blouse that same color when I worked in the bank and had to wear nice business suits and it was my favorite and I love that color. Do you buy starter plants from a local garden center or start everything from seeds? Do you WS? If so, what is your personal choice of potting soil to use for WS? That Bishops castle rose, was that in your garden or somebody else's that I was looking at. It is a delectable shade of soft pink and I love the shape of the rose itself. I want to buy some Double Knock out roses in Spring 2010. We just had a lilac tree/bush dug up because of lilac borer. If I plant anything else in that place, will they get the same borer? I have heard that the Double pink KO roses don't do as well as the Double red KO..wonder why? I don't like to look at a rose and see the yellow center. I like a tight rose when it's blooming, sort of like a peony bloom. That rose reminds me of an heirloom pink rose that my Mother had 60 some years ago and it had the most wonderful fragrance to it, and I think it was a climber, sort of reminded me of Cecile Brunner rose.
I loved those lillyput zinnas you had. My DH loves zinnia so I bought 2 pkts. of large purple zinna seeds the other day. I have lillyput zinnas on my want list.
Thank you for your kindness and have a wonderful holiday with your family and friends. Are you near Roswell, Dunwoody or Lawrenceville, Ga. area?We have relatives and friends in those cities near Atlanta.