Amazing you have that much growth in only 2 years. Love the backyard, too. Is that a vine growing around the tree on the left, or just branches?
Show us your garden beds!
thanks all - i do a little of everything in planning the beds - tall in back - usually like to have a mixture of shrubs - flowering, conifers (dwarf or small), jap. maples, ground cover like sedum, and perennials. not too many annuals only marigolds and petunia's. oh and hosta where ever i can. there are many times i walk all over the yards for days trying to find the right spot for something - it usually ends up with me transplanting something out, moving in the new and building another bed for the old. then the cycle begins again.
surprised that this thread has not had more activity - i like the bed shots better most of the time.
Nice-looking beds, Bill. I'm slowly learning to add 'bones' to my beds, thanks to all of youse guys. Thanks. I like the whole bed shots, too, to get ideas of combos.
I like 'The Gardener's Diary' show on HGTV. Those are some gorgeous gardens.
So beautiful Bill and Louise...
I'm real crazy we comes to planning my gardens...I have to colorize and match the house if the garden is surrounding the house. Have to plan it out on paper with pictures and fill in to have something blooming each season-short in front,tall in back.
jen one bed up i posted that is all perennials is the blue/purple bed big - tall in middle and worked my way out - sage in the middle surrounded by different lavender, salvia, agastache, nepeta, and at the edges asters (purple dome and a pink one noid).
that was the plan - there is also a rose magnolia a couple hydrangea, and a weeping redbud in there. - i'm sure stuff will get moved.
Wow Wha, your yard is amazing! Very inspiring! : ) Did you do all the hardscaping yourself? I bet there is a lot of blood sweat and tears in there if you did! : )
Bill, what is the JM in post 9077? It's magnificent!
Ya, if it's round and you can see it from all sides, then I do like the tall in the middle and work outwards.
thanks meredith - yes i do all the hardscaping/landscaping myself
the jm is a crimson queen i have two of them - the one in the picture as a broken one purchased from HD cheap. they are hardy as the picture shows - it was moved two times before this spot.
I am impressed wha! I would like to know how manay years you have into that. (So maybe I'll have an idea of, at what point I should bow my head in shame, if mine doesn't look that good! lol)
I've had 3 summers to work on my yard here. It's come a long way, considering I started with a blank slate (of weeds-lol). I don't feel my gardens are worthy of showing off yet but I'll post a couple pics anyway.
This is what I've acheived so far for the garden I put in along my walkway to my front door. This is in spring, it changes alot as the summer wears on.
Not too long later the lily tulips bloom - which I am very fond of for some reason. : )
I don't think I have a full view shot of this area but this is how it looked in sept.. It repeats these same plants 3 or 4 times.
Okay I'm out of order here because I did find one from 7/11. Although I moved stuff around after this picture was taken so it looked totally different by sept.. Plus I added a bunch of stuff last year so I can't wait to see how it works out this year.
This is the top of the walkway ( what I see when I walk out my front door) in late May.
This is it from the other angle. The lighting is bad and it needs to be edged. But you can get the idea. I did completely change this area in fall though, so it will look completely different this coming season. lol
Here is the honeysuckle at peak bloom probably about mid summer. You can see how odd my front entrance is set up. It is quite challenging to make it look right.
I don't know if you can tell, but most of my plants have been selected to attract hummers and butterflies. I do ocassionally buy stuff just because it appeals to me for what ever reason. Especially when I find a deal.
Here is my biggest project in it's 3rd year. It started out as a much smaller island and as we've renovated the yard by removing trees putting in a pool and just plain leveling it out and bringing in some decent top soil for dh to grow grass in. It has changed a lot. Evrything is still newly planted and small plus again I've added a ton of stuff here as well. So it will look totally different this coming season. : ) You can see all the bare spots - well that's where I planted a bunch of seedlings that should come into there own this season - hopefully. : )
I've basically just been planting stuff where ever my dh will not be bulldozing anymore. The pool hasn't completely gotten to that point yet but here is what I've done so far with it. He still needs to finish a large waterfall on the deep end before I have free rain of planting stuff here.
My big project in the picture prior (to the pool garden) is very hard to take full shots of because it is soo big. But here is one end of it later in the season. I meant to say when I posted it, The previous picture of it was late June.
This message was edited Feb 6, 2009 10:17 AM
I am still in the process of figuring out how tall the plants I've planted get (in real life - not just in writings) I've found some stuff to get a foot or two taller than claimed by catalogs or on the plantfiles - while others have been shorter. Plus the way the plants look before and after they bloom and what time they bloom is all stuff I'm finding out as I go. So I find myself constantly wanting to change things. I keep telling myself -I haven't had much time at it and it will be right someday. Lol
Here is an example: These agastache got huge! I have them in front of coneflowers - so from the side of the garden I see - I couldn't even see the coneflowers. My neighbor had a better view than me - lol. That's on my list of things to fix. But my dilemma is the agastache might be biennial so they might be much smaller this year. So I still have to wait and see what to do. : )
wonderful Merideth
meredith - i think what you've is very nice and a lot for only 3 years!! I've been here 10 years and landscaping it for about the last 5 seriously. i think when we look at our own yards we do not see them like others do. We know in our own yards what the future plan is, see them in seasons where they may not look as good a the pic's we post - etc.....
I appreciate everyone's compliments - reinforces i'm going in the right direction - i also know they are no where near where i want them to be - sounds like you are the same. your beds really look great well planned out.
btw - when is the pool party?
Meredith I love your beds and I think you should be very pleased with your progress in such a short time. It is my experience that gardens are never done and will be tweaked until the resident gardener hasn't got any tweakability left. I also plant for the hummers and butterflies as well as myself and looking at your garden they must feel right at home there. What kind of agastache is that? It looks very nice and the color is nice too. If you do need to replace it, a good tall but see through plant with similar color and that attracts butterflies is verbena bonariensis. It is an annual but re-seeds here and is a blooming machine all season but you can see plants through its growth. I will be looking forward to pics of all those seedlings you put in last year.
Thank you GE and Thank you Wha – Thank you for making me feel better about my beds. I just feel like I never stick to a plan. I spend all winter planning and then when spring comes – beds aren’t ready, the weather isn’t cooperating, I am behind planting everything, and I end up sticking stuff where ever I can find a spot! lol BTW there is a permanent pool party here starting the first day of school vacay, the hostess (me) might not have time to entertain anyone though. She is always too busy chasing butterflies to take pictures of and working in the garden. She does on occasion jump in the pool in her clothes after sweating her but off digging in the yard. So that is some entertainment at least. ; ) lol
That Agastacche is A. foeniculum or Anise Hyssop – I have a TON of seed if you want some. (d-mail me if you do) I do need to foreworn you that the reason I have so much seed is because they are prolific seeders – so I wouldn’t recommend planting them anywhere that you don’t want them to do as they please. Even if they act biennial there should still be a ton. I saw lots of babies growing around there bases, so even if the originals don’t stay they’ll be some juniors to replace them. I want to get my hands on either Black Adder or Blue Fortune (now that I’ve seen how the species is.) Those ones are supposed to be sterile, and are crosses of the A. foeniculum and I think A. rugosum. Look them up – they are supposed to be better for more formal borders or if you just don’t want to have them take over a bed. I will keep the foeniculum – but I need to give it it’s own space where it can do as it pleases. I see this bed being taken over eventually, if I leave them there. I do collect the seed and cut the stalks down, but seeds still manage to drop. The bracts hold their color even after they bloom so someone might be fooled into thinking they are still blooming and unknowingly let them drop there seed all over the place.
Verbena bonariensis was a new one for me this year. And actually the way the produce tons of seed reminds me a lot of the Anise Hyssop. It’s like you can just never shake it all out there are so many! lol I did have a few plants of it in that bed – pretty close to where the agastache was. So hopefully they will spread themselves around a little. I did end up loving them. So did the Monarchs, which is always a good thing.
I had most of them in a different spot, I really loved them but I don’t think I want them in that spot again. But here is a pic anyways. I collected a lot of the seeds and cut the remaining tops and threw them in an area I am leaving wild. (not by choice – I have a big pile of old branches left from having 30 trees removed – so it is impossible to mow – I threw all my spent blossoms in there after they produced seed – hoping they would grow in the pile instead of all the weeds that grew naturally.) I plan on starting a tray of them soon, I am not sure where I will plant them but I have some BIG plans for this year. Hopefully I can get half of it done. : )
Sorry for the short story everyone : )
Oops somehow I lost the picture. Here it is. : )
Lovely, Meredith. Great job in such a short time. And, our gardens are always changing. That's the fun of it. I also like the tall verbena and like to see where it pops up.
Merideth Blue Fortune is sterile
Meredith...looks great! I love your scrollwork edging next to the walk and I LOVE the pool.
I think it looks wonderful Meredith. As others before me have said, gardening is ever changing. That's part of the fun. I have Blue Fortune. Be very careful where you plant it. The bees absolutely adore it. Mine are covered every day with hundreds of bees.
Everyone's beds are so nice, mine still need a lot of work. Thank you all for the encouragement everyone. : ) I have been trying to put my ideas down on paper, it is so hard to remember everyting I need to do. Anyone else have new plans for this spring?
Flowerjen I'm glad to hear you like the garden fence, I put it up to keep the family from walking through my plants. They would not stop even with lots of nagging - even dh was guilty. I wasn't sure if people would think it looked good or not.
This message was edited Feb 13, 2009 11:08 PM
This is such a great winter eye candy. I am starting to think about posting some of the long views of our gardens. It is so helpful to step back mid winter and really think about what needs moving in an areas or seeing parts that are desperate for additions or thinning. Thanks all. I will back as I tend to take my vows more seriously if done in public, so I will post with thoughts about the future. I am amazed at how much some of you have gotten done in just a few years. Patti
Oh please do post pictures and ideas - maybe you'll help spark my imagination! : )
Not that I/m obcessive or anything but this is the(grammas term) busy work I have been at to keep from going crazy.
I measured everything for grids of the first year plants from last year. There is one new garden with nothing in it but a coupla of astilbes.
I took pictures of the gardens last year and am glad I did so I could make a panorama with pasted pictures of flowers to get a color scheme going.
The following pictures are of one area called "shade-nerpart"
Last June when we decided to make this small patch of lawn into garden ,a nuisence to mow.
This is a long view of the same area after lazagna layering.
This is the pasted (photoshop) plan, in the best of all worlds it will reeeaaally look like this.
As you probably know gardening isnt an exact science so I will "sally forth" and hope when my plants come I will have room for everything
This is a general color scheme two of the heucheras are darker purple.
Wow that is so cool how you photoshopped that! That will look wonderful!
Be advised its a long way from dream and paste - to the real thing.
When the plants come I will probably do something different.
This message was edited Feb 14, 2009 11:34 AM
That is way cool. Of course with your talent as a painter, you could just paint a picture of exactly what you want on a canvas. Patti
Something I found out while planing a virtual garden with Photoshop.
You know how there are plants you want?
Well its possible to size the picture to fit into a space.
In the real garden it might not fit,so I have measured the actual space and made a grid to be sure the plants I fell in love with on-line are actually going to fit.
I hope I've beed a bit generous and have space leftover so I can fit in my second choices.
I have tried doing the photoshop thing before and it IS quite difficult to get all the sizes right. I pretty much gave up. You made me want to try again though.