Oh wow, dream garden no holds barred? Whew...
Tea olive hedged all around, with a redwood arbor and gate at the entrance. Those really cool little square pavers with mints or thymes or sweet woodruff between them, winding down the path to the first garden 'room' - enclosed all around with Rugosa roses and serviceberry shrubs, soft moss underfoot, and a big patch of sunflowers of every kind for winter food for the birds,with a bird bath and feeders and a redwood bench glider to sit in and watch the birds come into.
Exiting that through a break in the Rugosas, and into the butterfly garden with 3 or 4 puddling spots surrounded by all of the flowers that butterflies love, like Butterfly bushes in pink and blue and white, Russian sage, and nearly any and every kind of Salvia you can think of, plus scads of healthy host plants for their babies to munch on all surrounded by healthy Daphne bushes.
Next would be the riotous color room to attract the hummingbirds, with a mossy center that allowed you to sit eye level with the flowers and watch the little bejeweled wings flash and sparkle in the sun as they ate, and then dive bombed and chittered at each other over the territory! Fig trees would surround this area, giving them plenty of big leaves to duck under in rain and the summer heat.
Then on through a break to the water feature area as you rounded the corner and spied her...Old, full weeping willow with her silvery green limbs gracefully drifting on a small lake containing a solar water fountain with one of those stone bench sets that hugs the trunk of the tree so that you could "hide out" underneath, surrounded by oodles of sweet grass, marine heliotrope and pink muhly grass in the background swaying in the early evening breeze as you listened to the frogs peep and turtles plop-plopping back into the water from warming themselves all day.
As you exit the garden in the early dusk, you would enter the moon garden with a pergola in the middle, underneath which rocking chairs moved gently, inviting you to sit down and watch the night unfold. Midnight Phlox would be planted at the base of the pergola and pink, purple and white moonflowers covered the overhead sections through which you could gaze at the stars all night if you wanted. Soft white tea lights inside of etched rock would mark your pathway as you meandered back to the open porch where the hammock waited in case you wanted to sleep out under the night sky.
And then you would wake up the next morning, late for work because you were up late at night dreaming about your perfect garden :)
From a former Clearwater resident....thanks for the play!
