Garden Design: A Border for One Season

August Dreams Garden in mid-June

One of the best decisions I made three years ago when I worked with a garden designer to lay out the garden borders was to plant one border with plants that bloom only in late summer and early fall.

I call it August Dreams Garden and right now it is just green plants.  The only color comes from a garden sculpture in the middle of it.

The lack of blooms in this garden calls attention across the way to Ploppers' Field which in a few days will be filled with daylily and lily blooms.

I personally like the idea of each garden border having its own season, its own time to attract the most attention.  No one said a garden's focal point couldn't shift from week to week. One garden border comes into full blown, another fades quietly into the background.

When I walk into a garden that is "all going on at once", I don't know where to go first in that garden.  Look over here, look over there, try to look everywhere at once.  It's like walking into a room with a different chintz fabric on every wall and a totally different fabric for the bedspread.  Most people would agree that such a room is too much "something" and though silent, may be noisy to look at, if that is possible.

Or maybe a garden with blooms everywhere all at once  is like watching a four act play, with all the actors performing  all the scenes on stage at the same time.  That would be noisy and confusing. Most people would get anxious and annoyed by all the commotion, the talking over one another, the lack of focus.

I prefer my garden this way. The focus shifts from week to week. What is quiet one week will be noisy the next week. What is colorful now will fade to green and what is green now will burst into color to take its place.

In about six weeks, I should start to see the first significant blooms in August Dreams Gardens.   Until then, I have other flowers to look at and admire.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - June 2013

Triteliea 'Rudy'

Welcome to Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day for June 2013.

Here in my USDA Hardiness Zone 6a garden in central Indiana, I followed my usual routine for bloom day and went around the garden noting blooms and taking pictures.

Then I came inside, uploaded all the pictures and went back through old bloom day posts, comparing what is blooming now to what was blooming on this same day in June from 2007 through 2012.

Those old bloom day posts give me proof that this year's garden is still lagging behind previous years by about a week or more.

It's the truth!  I cannot tell a lie around Ithuriel's Spear, Triteliea 'Rudy'.  It is blooming late in the front garden, but is just about the only flower in front right now, other than some fading violas and Knockout 'Radsunny' roses and a few slender spikes of Heuchera.

Out in the back, it's hard to miss the Oso Easy 'Cherry Pie' rose blooming on the edge of the garden border I call 'The Shrubbery'.

On the other side of the chairs, Shrubby Cinquefoil, Potentilla fruticosa, is blooming.  It's never going to be quite as showy as the rose, but it's nice, too.

Plopper's Field, where plants are plopped in wherever there is a bare spot that looks like a good place for a plant, is a bit of a mess right now.

By this day in previous years, the daylilies that are growing in Plopper's Field were blooming. This year, there are merely remnants of Digitalis sp., Coreopsis sp., Clematis integrifolia 'Alba', and common ol' daisies blooming. 

I'm sure the old saying applies. "You should have seen it last week." Or maybe, "It's going to be a lot nicer next week".

On the edge of Plopper's Field, I found a little tiny Clematis, in bloom.

There is just one stem, one bloom. I have no idea which Clematis it is.

I do know that this one is Clematis 'Rooguchi'.

I think this is the Clematis that got me hooked on Clematis in general and made me realize that there is more to this genus than 'Jackmanii'.

Near the entrance to the Vegetable Garden Cathedral, yarrow, Achillea sp.,  is blooming.

Yes, behind it are some 'Stella d'Oro' daylilies. I've tried to evict those from the garden but somehow a clump of them remains.

In the Vegetable Garden Cathedral, there's a garlic scape or two.

I cut these off so that all the plant's energy is spent on bulb formation.

There are also fading blooms on the raspberries.

This surely means that fresh raspberries will soon be part of my dinner.

One last bloom in the vegetable garden delights me.

I hope by the next bloom day, I have tomatoes to eat.

What other blooms are  there to see on the 15th of June at May Dreams Gardens?  Oakleaf hydrangeas, hostas, ditch lilies, to name a few, along with fading pansies and violas and the slender spikes of Heuchera.

What's blooming in your garden in this month of June?

We'd love to have you share your blooms on the 15th of each month by joining us with your own Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day post. Just post on your blog about what is blooming this month in your garden and then come back here and leave a link to your blog post in the Mr. Linky widget below along with a brief comment to let us know you've posted.

The rules are simple... no rules! You can include pictures, lists, no lists, common names, botanical names, whatever you’d like to do to showcase your blooms. All are welcome!

“We can have flowers nearly every month of the year.” ~ Elizabeth Lawrence

Waiting for fireflies

Evening in the garden

She sat in her garden for the first time this season even though there were millions of weeds to pull. She challenged herself to sit quietly until she saw a firefly.

Once challenged, she would not back down.  So she sat for a long time, quietly surveying her garden, feeling the breezes, watching the birds, breathing in the breath of her garden.

Then she saw a firefly and went inside for the evening, leaving the garden for their enjoyment.

In the meantime, the weeds continued to grow, but so did the flowers. 

 

Garden Fairies provide a garden update

Clematis 'Pagoda'

Garden fairies here.

We are garden fairies and we are providing a garden update today.  You know what it means when we take over this blog and provide an update, don't you?

It means that there are things going on around here that Carol won't write about and so we garden fairies have to take it upon ourselves to interrupt our important parties, celebrations, festivals, jubilees, teas, and revelries to provide updates that otherwise would not see the light of day.

We will start with something pretty, like Clematis 'Pagoda', before we commence with some important updates.  Yes, Carol is still smitten with Clematis of all kinds which suits us garden fairies just fine as we love these flowers, too.  Ol' Tangle Rainbowfly, who more or less knows the whole history of this place, says he has never seen such a tangle of pretty flowers as this tangle of clematis.  Woo-wee, that really says something about these flowers.

Out in the front garden, Ol' Tangle rubbed his head when he saw the crabapple tree and tried to recall a time when he saw actual crabapples on this crabapple tree out front.

When Carol saw all these crabapples on the crabapple tree we heard her say, "Well, I'll be a pea picking pillywiggin!  Where did all those little apples come from?"  This means that she has never seen a crabapple on this tree, either, in the nearly 16 years that it has been growing here at May Dreams Gardens.

Either we all are nuts, including Carol, or this is the first time this crabapple tree has had crabapples on it.  Wonder what happened? And no, we do not need Dr. Hortfreud to give us an opinion on the question of nuts.

We are garden fairies, and we cannot wonder too long as there are other events that took place here in this garden that ought to be shared.

Yesterday, Carol came out into the garden and she was carrying a new tool that scared us nearly half to death.  Sweetpea Morningdew is still recovering from the shock of it all. She gets the vapors so easily, it seems.

Carol bought herself a Sneeboer Wrotter.

Look at the point on that tool.  Look at this two wing thingies.  Even Granny Gus McGarden, who says she's seen it all when it comes to garden tools and garden fools, had never seen anything like this tool.  Carol seems to like it, but honestly, we are garden fairies, and can you imagine if we were asleep under a big ol' weed and Carol came along and poked this thing down into the ground around the roots of that weed? Why, it sends shivers down our spines to think of it.

We are garden fairies and we are going to run for cover when we see Carol come out here with her Wrotter.  Yes, we are.  It scares us, but like we said, she seems to like it.

We will say this, there are certainly plenty of weeds around here to keep Carol and her new Wrotter tool busy for days on end.  We garden fairies like to say that a weed grows wherever a raindrop falls.  We should know, we are busy running around casting weed seeds in the rain. It makes 'em grow better.

Now, don't tell Carol that we garden fairies have anything to do with weeds. She thinks they come from wind blown seeds or are from seeds dropped by the birds when they do you-know-what while sitting in the trees and shrubs.  She must never be told that we garden fairies have anything to do with weeds or she might come after us with that Wrotter.

Shudder to think. Let's not talk about it anymore. We are garden fairies and we want to think only pleasant thoughts.

Goodness gazanias, how time gets on. We did not even get to tell you about what Carol did yesterday that has us all up in arms.  We are garden fairies, we will tell that story another day.

Submitted by:
Violet Sweetpea Maydreams, Chief Scribe and Weed Sower at May Dreams Gardens