View of a Different Garden

View of a garden taken through the glass

This is my new garden view. It is a garden I drew up a plan for over five years ago.  It is a very formal parterre, 30' wide by 90' deep.  It has a diamond in the center with a fountain and pea gravel walks leading from each point and around the center diamond.  On the longitudinal sides are privet, which if maintained as I do in my yard could be a nice privatizing element, but is overgrown even with my impromptu hedging efforts taking it back a foot or so about once a year.  The differences with this privet hedge and my own show the need for constant pruning of privet used in this way.

There were several poor plant choices made in the lay out of this garden, however there are also a couple plant choices which have been excellent.  Lining the pea gravel paths is Autumn Joy sedum backed with shades of blue iris.  I would say the first 3-4 years this was an incredibly good choice.  It always showed to advantage.  At this point being perennial, desperately needs to be re-divided widening the path.

Pointing up each of the centers of the corner rhomboid shapes are Alberta spruce.  The original thought was to clip them into a formal spiral.  Clipping is, however, a time-consuming activity, and has not been done.  Running parallel to the center diamond are bands of yew clipped flat in a wide curled double "S".  There are some good bones here.

Plants were massed in the planted areas.  Still, there are a large number of interesting plants here:  the large large-leaved rhododendron which bloom in large balls of bloom in the spring, the Annabelle hydrangea, sundrops, allium glaucum, pink and white bleeding heart, masses of Asiatic and Orienpet lilies, various other species alliums.  There are also pedestrian things like rudbeckia which, however, is a good choice interplanted with the sundrops providing a continuously blooming triangle.

As the long view of this garden positions the sunrise behind the fountain from my window and the fall fog will hang like a mist above this garden at sunrise it provide a view of a garden in transitional light with the dew hanging heavy on the fall-colored foliage.  The fall colors backlit in the morning sunlight is something not present in my home garden.  It is an aspect of the light I have been admiring here, however over-run "my" new garden is.

It brings me joy.

Garden Status Update: 39 Days and Counting

Allium 'Purple Sensation'

For the first time, my garden will be open for the price of a ticket to garden walk enthusiasts for the Waushara County Master Gardeners Garden Walk.  That same number of days ago, my garden had 4" to 6" of snow cover and was still recovering from an ice storm of nearly epic proportions.

I'm stressing just a little.

One of the gardeners on the walk, I heard, is installing a pond just to take her garden up a notch.  Dr. Apps is concerned none of his daylilies except the very earliest ones will be in bloom.  I have so many unfinished tasks, I cannot even begin to enumerate them, but weeding out June grass, edging, and mulching top my list.

Darrel and I both have flat after flat of cuttings and seedlings we've grown still to be planted.  It threatened a coleus killing frost the night before last!  It's been hard to harden off plants with the threat of frost still present, let alone get them into spots in pots and the ground.  And while I like to garden, I can't do it 24/7 (not with rain), and with a vegetable garden to get in at my brother's and other miscellaneous weeding in others' gardens.

Colorful creeping phlox along sidewalk will be a nice green mat by then.

Woodland phlox, starry solomon, and speedwell will give way to campanula 'Elizabeth' in this bed.

Orange azalea 'Mandarin Lights' will just be a soft green shrub instead of splotches of vibrant orange against my brown fence.

There are beautiful plants to admire right now in my garden.  I also had my first supper from my potager, a salad with baby lettuce, pea shoots, spring onions, mustard greens, asparagus, and cabbage leaves.  The strawberry bed is loaded down with pendulous umbrels of strawberries and the rhubarb is thinking about cobbler.

Lily of the Valley

And who doesn't like lily of the valley?  Rounding a corner and gettinga whiff of its scent is joy after a long winter.  What is not joy, is that it picked this year to creep across my pea gravel path with world domination in mind, right after it conquers my hosta bed.

Baby Boo

And Baby Gardener is finally walking, and decidedly a baller as shown in this picture during a T-ball game at my Dad's 80th birthday celebration.  Boo like asparagus over my award-winning oatmeal raisin cookies!  Definitely Baby Gardener!

In between rain storms, I took Dr. Apps up on his offer to spray my front daylily border's June grass.  It's a 40'+ border I won't need to weed, and who knows more about how to spray grass in daylilies than Dr. Apps? 

And I've noticed many of the neighbors have outdone themselves primping their yards this year, like not only are our two gardens on display, but it's like that curb appeal show: "Curb Appeal-- The Block" only "Carden Walk-- The Block.  All except this neighbor...

...whose house you can sort of see over my fence and who has had the siding ripped off his house for about a month.  I was sort of getting used to the black only to come home yesterday and find it had been Tyvek-ed.  I have heard green siding, which could be a lot of different things.  But it is a big borrowed view in my garden, so fingers are crossed. 

Yes, there is a lot to do, here in central Wisconsin, and as usual, most not under my control.

I did get these wire plant stands planted.  Most years I don't.  This year I married a wire basket to the plant stand with fencing wire, painted them white and got new cocoa fiber liners for them.  They are sort of tipsy so they are wired to my fence and into the ground.

So 39 days and counting...

Silly Allium

I've been taking stock what spring bulbs to plant where and looking for some nice early purples for a potential client. Needing inspiration, I went back to some pictures I took at the Chicago Botanical Gardens back in June.

The lollipop purple allium are so silly, they made me smile. Here's your smile for the day!