Garden pics please?

Could we see some pics of garden layouts? I am putting in a historic iris preservation garden and would really like to see some pictures of your garden layouts. Pics that show your entire garden. My irises are currently spread everywhere I could find a place, but I am now ready to start with a garden.
Love the pics of irises, but I would really like to see gardens this time.
Thanks!

I'm going to share pictures of region 18 flower beds!

shade bed

Must be all they do! LOL

An angel's hinny! LOL

All for now! Sampson's garden

Beautiful! I knnow my iris beds will never look like that. I am really more interested in making a regular garden with my historic irises and use my newer irises in my landscaping where they are now. The newer ones I currently have in the bed behind our garage has grown too thick and I am going to have to find a way to squeeze them in somewhere else.
Thanks for the lovely pics. Truly a showplace.
Anybody else? Home gardens? Business gardens?
deb

Here's my front garden which bakes in the sun for most of the day. I'm not into grass and mowing so I have rows of plants (including irises) and rows of groundcovers (mazus, arabis between the stones and ceratostigma plumbaginoides under the hedge) with stepping stones so I know where to put my feet when weeding.

Row 1: Veronica, irises, daylilies Pyrethrum, Heliopsis Loraine Sunshine
Row 2: arizona sun, irises, sidalcea, annuals (whatever I feel like growing from seed -- this year its asters and zinnas)
Row 3: Tinkerbelle daisy, iris, veronica, penstemon, Heliopsis Loraine Sunshine
Row 4: penstemon, iris, daylilies, sidalcea, mums-Matchstick

That way I have something blooming just about every month of the growing season

Hope this helps

I like stepping stones, but I worry that someone would stumble and fall on them. Of course that is always a possibility with any kind of path between rows. I have been thinking landscape fabric with mulch between rows.
Debbie

This message was edited Jun 7, 2011 7:27 AM

Hi Deb, here's my front yard...

Thanks for photos of beds layout

I currently have around 400-500 named irises. Almost all need to be thinned. I want to keep my newer irises in the landscaping around our new house. My old ones, 1950 and older, I want to put into a HIPS garden. After our house was finished and I started landscaping, I planted things too close together. Here, at our old house, it takes things forever to grow.I wanted things there to actually have reasonably full foundation planting in a few years without waiting until we were too old to enjoy it. Well, things over there grow like there was no tomorrow and the beds are already getting CROWDED! I talked to a man at the Co. that ut iin our septic system (turns out he was a former student at VA Tech and had hubby for a professor) about an iris garden over the septic field, and he said it would be fine there. The garden hasn't been put in yet, hopefully by this fall. I have been thinking about rows but wanted some other ideas to consider.
Here are some pics of where they are currently located.

one side of the upper driveway:


This message was edited Jun 8, 2011 7:52 AM

Across the drive from the above bed:

I have my irises planted in two different ways. One, in lines to dig for sales, and the others planted in garden beds. I plant the siberians and historic bearded all together, as the historics can take much more water, and more crowded conditions than some of the newer irises. I guess historics became historics as they can survive so much.

Here's a garden shot:

Behind the garage...the most crowded...

You sure do have a lot of irises, Deb! I was going to comment, it will be good to put the irises over the septic, unlessssss....the septic needs to be dug up for any reason. We had only lived here 4 years, and had to have the septic all dug up, as it had become tilted and wasn't leaching properly. And since then we have had to have the leach lines redone. A lot of that was because we're on sandy soil, though.

Nice gardenshots everyone.

I love the historics too! I probably have about 100 at this time. Went a bit overboard last year... Here's a pic of where I have a lot of my historics. It's next to our retaining wall. I mixed in clematis and a wisteria to climb the wall. Perennials are mixed in with room to put in annuals for now and then in future years, hopefully will be filled in by the irises and perennials. I have a problem with straight and orderly. DH yells at me because I never design a bed straight. I like curvy and more natural looking lines. He complains because of the mowing...

My husband gave in to curvy beds a long time ago. I do try to do long curves, though, so it's easier for him to mow.

Here's a pic of my big flower bed in the back. Please don't check out the weeds...it's done nothing but rain this spring! Once again, irises are mixed with perennials with little walkways throughout the garden for ease of access.

The last one is still a work in progress. Awaiting the forklift to move the 2 pallets of beautiful lumpy fossil rocks to edge it. Gravel in the pathways, mulch (of course), and my daughter and I have been slowly working on stepping stones for the pathways too. It is like a big kidney shape.

Just beautiful!

Weeds in upstate NY? NO! LOL, LOL.

Thank you! Weeds, bugs, mildew and RAIN, RAIN and more RAIN!!!

DH is a farmer and he's spent more time pumping water off fields this spring to save them from flooding the newly sprouted seed than getting the rest of the fields planted. Very behind this year with the crops.

We live in the country, also. A lot of muck farms up here, and they just got planted. Our neighbor just got his corn fields in. No knee high by the fourth of July this year.

That just happens to be what DH is! A muck farmer! Most people would never have heard of such a thing! The muck turns into liquid soup, no substance what-so-ever to it. Really strange consistency when flooded. I have left over muck dirt that was shaken off of harvested onions, etc for my garden. Wonderful rich gardening though.