The flowers are beautiful but I wish you could smell the Korean Spice Viburnum. Pure heaven.
This is Heuchera Regina and Sedum Rosie Glow
Front garden today
Heuchera Palace Purple background. Blue Parrot Tulip, Iris Little Episode
I thought Windows 7 was suppose to be an improvement but there wasn't a rotation problem with XP.
Hosta Sum and Substance and Allium Purple Sensation are both just opening.
First peony of the season
Sidewalk border, south side
Hosta Yellow Boa, bleeding heart, and unknown ground cover.
Beautiful...
Wow, that's all beautiful! I love your bleeding hearts!
Lovely garden!
Thanks for the kind words. I get great pleasure viewing photos of everyone's garden posted here and hope I was able to repay all of you with pictures of my garden.
Lovely garden views. I had to turn myself sideways to get the correct vantage point but it was worth it as your garden is lovely.
maozamom, I think I recognize your unknown ground cover as creeping phlox, Phlox stolonifera.
Thank you semper. I googled it and you're right. There's only a few plants in my gardens that I can't identify and now there's one less.
mao
You're welcome Mao.
I do like your bubble blowing fairy.
I use both the creeping phlox (P.stolonifera) and the wood phlox (P. divaricata) as ground covers in my garden that is how I identified it.
I've given myself the extra challenge of not only a cottage garden, but a cottage garden using mostly native plants.
I did alot of research and experimenting to find wonderful native ground covers and I think I'm getting some good and pretty native plant substitutes for the non natives I had started out using.
In the part shade areas of the garden, besides the 2 phloxes I am using tiarella (foam flower), bluets (Houstonia caerulea, this is a fabulous little plant that blooms exuberantly and spreads gently ) , Waldenstenia (barren strawberry with small yellow blooms and leaves that form a good size clump) and sedum ternata ( nice white flower sprays in the spring and Heuchera americana.
This message was edited May 14, 2011 5:29 AM
mao -- gorgeous photos!! I dont have much blooming -- yet. My Rhods were blooming after 10 days... that was a pretty sight - but the last rain washed away the spent blooms.
thanks for posting!!
Lovely "walk" semper.
Beautiful semper. I also see a violet in there too.
Most of my shade is taken up by hosta. I'm considering removing a number of them to allow a larger variety of plants but what I really want is more places to make beds. There's always more possibilities than opportunities.
Mao, thanks. Yes there are also violets in the border.
You can always do what I do when you run out of space, start gardening on the neighbors property.
I actually did a barter, I do a garden bed for them ( I threw in a rain garden I always wanted off my downspout onto their property gratis) and they do some construction and repair work for me.
My garden ends at the small black obelisk. The picket fence is my neighbors.
The rest of the plants are in the rain garden and border I created on my neighbors property.
We have a garden across the street and around the corner at the Historic Society. Plus we harvest the charity plots at the community garden.
Ah, then you are way ahead of me in your gardening addiction!
gorgeous gardens. love.
semper
Your photos of your garden are so very beautiful! I'm green (and purple) with envy!
Sylvia
semper, I love that you use mostly natives in your gardens. That would be so much more challenging than using hybrids, but your bugs and birds must just love you. (and your pics are gorgeous, so you're quite good at using those natives well).
Thank you dillanasanna and pgt for the interest and compliments.
I do think the cottage style garden is very compatible with using native plants, after all we are attracted to a full rich exuberant style, so adding many pretty natives plants seems easy. I do have quite a few birds nesting in my small garden and have just started to notice an increase in the type of butterflies the garden attracts. My one disappointment is a lack of hummingbirds until the end of the season.
I'm sorry maozamom, if my comments and photos led the discussion a little off track.
Your garden is lovely and the combinations beautiful. I've enjoyed the photos immensely.
I'm also delighted to see you have a sidewalk garden too.
sempervirens,
I have some natives in my garden too, one of which is Aquilegia canadensis. I just saw a humming bird drinking from these flowers yesterday. Could be one to add to your garden if you want some early humming birds ;-)
No apology needed, semper. I think of these posts as conversations, and conversations evolve.
I too admire native gardens. There's a part of me that would enjoy creating one but I've admitted to myself that a large part of my character is as a collector. There's no way I'm ever going to resist all of the latest and greatest hybrids. Just call me weak.
pgt, The native wild columbine, Aquilegia canadensis, is probably my favorite flower and I have it sprinkled liberally throughout the garden. I wish I could get a glimpse of a hummingbird drinking from the flowers like you did.
I also have a group of fire pink, Silene virginica and S. caroliana blooming well, and huechera americana getting ready to bloom, along with 9 native honeysuckle , Lonicera sempervirens, all supposedly great hummingbird attractors. I still only get the late hummingbirds at the end of the season. They regularly visit the native honeysuckle and surprisingly Bowmans root (Gillenia trifoliata) I have planted under the yellow one in part shade. Since the Bowmans root blooms in the early summer I guess a must have had 1 earlier visitor.
mao, I understand the plant collector mentality very well, I just switched mine to natives.
I have traveled hours to find specialized nurseries, and blocked out days to attend members day sales at nature preserves.
It is difficult to find straight species when even the native plant nurseries feel compelled to offer more and more cultivars.
I don't even bother any more to go to nurseries that don't sell mostly natives.
I think it's how you put your garden together not always the individual plants that create the look.
My garden looks the same now with mostly natives as when I used the English cottage garden as a model.
In fact I sometimes look at the garden and laugh to myself at all the work I did to change to natives and how little it looks changed.