Aug 26. Things look much different than in June and July will all the daylilies. The pots do help add bright spots of color. Think I will do more coleus in pots next year to move in.
Show how your garden has changed over the last few months
I'm glad I removed all the sedum from around the edges of the beds. The annuals look so nice now. I took cuttings from this verbena and am going to try rooting them indoors over winter.
This message was edited Oct 4, 2006 11:45 AM
Only a few daylilies are still blooming in Sept, Spacecoast Cool Deals big blooms were much appreciated.
Sept 28.
What happened to those tiny celosia and mums I put out last spring?
And now it's Oct and I'm already looking at seed catalogs for next year. I posted lots of fall photos on another thread yesterday, but here is one last shot of the front as the season winds down.
This message was edited Oct 4, 2006 11:33 AM
I should be outside working, but I'm feeling lazy. Thanks for letting me take you on a season long tour of my front garden. I think I will start another thread of the back beds. Join me if you'd like. Here is a sneak preview.
Susan
Wow Susan thanks for the tour! Just breathtaking really! Amazing what a big difference there is in when plants are blooming in your area compared to here! Lilies are August bloomers up here - I have a trumpet 'African Queen' lily that's giving up on opening her buds. Love the iris and daylilies too - they don't flower here. Thanks again I thoroughly enjoyed it!
rannveig
Susan - your garden is absolutely breathtaking! I hope you would let me take a tour next year!!
Wow! What a great set of pictures. This year was the first time that I felt somewhat satisfied with my perennial beds. That was partially because I grew a lot of plants from seed for the spring of 2005 so my beds were fuller than ever before this year. Of course once I started getting on the right track, I moved to a new house. :-(
I am developing my wish list of plants for my new gardens and your pictures have given me a few additions. Your pictures also confirm some of the concepts that I have learned over the past few years. Your garden has some interesting specimens, but it is really set off by your repetition of plants and combinations of form and texture. Great job! This is only half?!?
- Brent
Susan, gorgeous gardens!
Without a camera, I'd be utterly lost in mine, forgetting what blooms where and when. I rarely do the smart thing: same place from the same angle twice a month.
This is the essential technique in Christopher Lloyds book "Succession planting", his last, as far as I know. I find it immensely helpful.
I get so involved in current projects that I forget to go around and take pictures of EVERYTHING regularly, and from the same angle.
Maybe some day, I'll actually mark some selected spots (hmm, with a flush stone?) to be the "picture spots", where you stand with the camera and aim it in four (or so) different directions, the same ones each time.
This would of course be in addition to all the random "beautiful shots" and "current projects" pictures. Heck, with an external hard drive and re-chargeable batteries, why not??
At first I thought your post was to be a "before-and-after fest", so I picked some pictures of... change to share. Here's one, from April 11.06.
And here's the same place, same angle (for once), in September.
noknok that is a nice change! Your garden looks huge! I wish I had so much space! Do you live in a rural area?
Edited to say - I think this is a great idea to photograph your garden like that to see how it changes over the summer. I just realised that I've been so focused on photographing my flowers this summer (got a new macro lens for my camera last spring) that I hardly took any wide angle shots of the borders or the garden ..... I'll try to remember to see the big picture too next year! ;-)
This message was edited Oct 4, 2006 10:56 PM
Hi, lincolntess-- I ALWAYS love to look at your garden pics. I always get good ideas and lots of enjoyment from them, so again, thank you for posting them!
What good idea to record in some kind of organized way the progress from spring to fall! I have to remember to do that. Maybe I could push the 'delete' button then, and some of my eye sores and experimental plantings would just disappear?!
Now I'll check out your back garden. Lot's to see in your yard!
And noknock-- you accomplished a whole lot through the summer!
Susan, your gardens are lovely. Obviously well thought-out and well-tended. A joy to look at! thanks so much for the tour. and what a good idea to keep a picture journal thru the season. I, too, am guilty of taking pics of individual flowers and new plantings and not recording the bigger picture. {mental note for spring}
can't wait to see the back...
noknok, love the before and after...what a difference! that's got to make you feel good!
gram ~a girl~
noknok, what a gorgeous spot you've made in just one season. It looks like you have lots of space to work with. How long have you lived there? I am going to have to get that book by Christopher Lloyd. I like his ideas, but have not seen this book yet. Will be good winter reading. My garden has evolved over the years without much design planning. Sometimes I think I would like to dig everything up and start all over again, but it would sure be a lot of work. Instead, I just keep moving things around each year as I get a better idea of when they bloom and how they do.
Susan
Susan, i had more time to look at your pictures. Looks to me like you've got your succession pretty well together (though I think you'll enjoy the book anyway) I think we all garden the way we "have to", given the place and who we are. Fine-tuning, moving and editing is surely the happiest thing to do here. And your plants look so full and healthy. You must be the neighborhood attraction!
You've really gone to town with daylilies. Are those blooming still? September would be good enough for me, if I could find some like that orange/red one near the end. 'King of masks' is gorgeous too, when does that one bloom?
I'm a big Helenium fan, just tried 'Coppelia' this season, LOVE them! 'Mardi gras' is another favorite.
It's a nice street, too, for "borrowed scenery", like an elongated park. I wish every street in America could look like that.
Rannveig, yes, I guess it's still rural. I have a shady yard at my house, but where I really garden is the land around my costume factory/banquet facility, that was ravaged by a decade of construction. It started as just wanting to "heal" the land, I got hooked, lined and sinkered, for life!
I'm only about five years into it.
One of the good things about it is, I get to deduct every tree, garden book and tulip bulb. I even get to call it "work", though at this point I'm way past the strictly "necessary" ;o)
Here's a before/after picture '02-'05
Here's another one, longer span involving a lot of construction too. 1991-2004.
The garden is now known as "Hard rock cafe", it was a parking area for decades. Worst "soil" on a stony property.
This message was edited Oct 5, 2006 10:33 PM
Before: a big pile of chips
August 1, 4 months later
View from bottom of garden
View from top end of garden
Closer views
Two days ago, Sterling Rose giving her last show for the year
Wishing my gardens looked as good in peak season as yours do winding down!
I second that!
noknok - you've really worked wonders on that garden of yours - not small transformation there!! Wow!
greenjay - beautiful!
Oh my, I need to take more atencion, was wondering why you all were writing noknok all over the place LOL. Sorry Noknok did not see your alias (one of the better ones I must say :o))
What a change from before nad after, and in so few month! Wow amazing
Susan
Love your plant combo! You seldom see that here. What a change in one season, lots of flowers and plants sigh…. Getting all jealous now LOL
Greenjay
Wonderful change :o))
In the last photo by the echinacia, it that a yarrow? Never seen that color before.
Monica :o)
Here is my little garden, it is onlu 32.8 feet long and 13. feet wide
We moved in in May and there was nothing here. The grey screen is much hated but need for privacy. But I really don`t think it will make it when the autunm winds starts to show it self.
I am a student so I can`t buy all the plants I would like, but what a blessing it is to have cosmos.
They grow magnificent and seeds are inexpensive ;o))
May 4-6
Edited to say; the little sticks were put there as a bumblebee had it`s nest there. Did not what to kill the poor little one. Love them ;o))
This message was edited Oct 6, 2006 11:13 AM
August 04
September 02
The hole project, nothing compared to all of yours, but I am happy as long as I get dirt under my nails :o))
http://www.simplesite.com/oxalis/4128544
Monica
yes, zest those are a brick-red variety of yarrow. I see it called "Paprika" yarrow around here.
Monica I love the transformation of your little garden - beautiful! :-)
noknok, it looks like you have made huge changes in just a few years. I can't believe how large the scrubs have grown in just 3 years in that photo with the red shed. What kind are they? You must have done a lot of soil improving in the "Hard rock cafe"garden. It looks wonderful. I have daylily blooms from May through Oct. Mostly in the 6 weeks in the middle of that time period, but 2 are reblooming now. The red and orange one is Saratoga springtime a very early one that blooms for about a month in May. King of Masks blooks in June/July.
Greenjay, I really like all the rock and stonework in your garden area. Wish we had more rocks around here. I have to buy them by the pound.
Monica, your garden is charming and looks so full and cheerful. Looks like you take good advantage of the space you do have. I love the annuals like cosmos that reseed and are colorful for so long.
susan
Noknok, You are right about me being lucky to have to have "borrowed scenery". There is even a waterfall in the park across from me that I claim as "my" waterfeature. I can hear it when I have the windows opened. Here is a photo of it. This area of the park has some nice plantings too.
Susan
Susan that is so cool - lucky you to have such great scenery practically on your doorstep!
I put together two collages of pictures taken from approximately the same place along one of our garden paths from early May until Oct. I think I will take a clue from noknok and try to do photos for next year from designated spots throughout the garden. That will be fun and useful. Patti
The second collage. Patti
Patti - those are gorgeous! Love the path and everything around it!!!
Yikes Susan, that's some free scenery! Is this typical of Lincoln Nebraska, or did you just get the right place? You're certainly adding to it. Must be "realtor's lane", cruising their clients around.
Yes, 5 years ago I panicked: "The right time to plant a tree was ten years ago", trees, everywhere!
I've since changed most of my ideas about garden layout. It's been very a very interesting aspect of "working with your past", hehe. Those are mostly White and Japanese black pines. I now have a strangely formal axis, cutting straight through a random Pine grove. I had to chew on that one a long time! But I kind of like where it's going.
Do you get your Daylilies locally or do you mail order? Most of what I see in local nurseries is pretty boring and "July-bound".
Monica, great, aren't Cosmos wonderful! I like mine, even though they turned into 7' shrubs, with a few flowers on the sides, just the "Bright lights", the others flower well. Someone suggested the soil is too rich. So what do you do? Dig a hole in the bed and fill it with gravel?
My soil is all excavation back-fill (they didn't set the top soil aside). I do all beds with newspaper and mulch, and amend the holes as I go. It gets better all the time!
Patti, I second Rannveig. That's what I meant, I'm really going to try for the EXACT same spot each time (such discipline!). Say beginning, middle and end of the month, April through November. That's 24 shots, six of your collages, the path going from clear in a sparse April to being completely obscured by mad growth. That's it, next year I'm doing it! I'm going to have fun picking the spots and setting a stone in each, maybe with an eye in it... And a landmark in the background to center the viewfinder on.
Here's a view through that rose arbour by the shed, along the straight 200' axis through the wilderness in between. I'm far from done here, and the sod took a beating, besides being full of grubs.
We have to buy our rocks too. The ones I am using are recycled from places around the property. Over the years the junipers grew & covered them up, now I have spent several months wacking out junipers & recovering rocks a bit at a time.
Thank eveyone for your kind words :o)))
Greenjay,
maybe I can look the mane up and find some seeds.
Susan
how nice to have such nice park so close to your home.
Patti,
I love paths they add just charm to a garden, nice doggi :o)
Noknok,
yes I have heard that to rich soil can delay blooming and growth. My little spot has more sand than Sahara and baking sun all day, a blassing in disguise sometimes. I probably be able to grow and overwinter plants than most here can`t.
When did you plant your cosmos they can take long before they really start blooming.
rose arbour is stunning :o))
