How does your garden grow? 30May14 - YouLookFab Forum

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How does your garden grow? 30May14

Carla

Veteran

Off Topic is a favourite forum. Often thought provoking discussions, sometimes sad news, but also happy moments and opportunities for fun and laughs.

Last year there were a few garden posts. I really enjoyed learning about what other Fabbers around the world were up to on their little (or big!) plots of paradise.

In starting this thread I would like to invite you to post pics and/or write about:

-your garden (flower, veg, pots on a balcony)
- borrowed views (the view from your apartment or hotel, a flowering tree in a park, your neighbours' roses over the fence)
-visitors to the garden (animals, birds, stray children)

Below are some pictures taken yesterday and today. I do not know this cat, but he/she did not seem perturbed in the least by my presence! We do get lots of cat traffic since I have nepeta (cat mint) in the garden!

Thanks for stopping by...

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Off Topic

15 replies

Latest reply was from Mander

Angie

(website)

Fashion Stylist

WOW. You have a stunning garden. But kitty steals the show. Clever cat mint kitty. xo

sarah

Veteran

You garden looks lovely and happy. I adore your paver path, especially with kitty lounging on it ; ).

Ah, this time of year makes me so happy. I love to be able to run out to the raised bed, grab a bunch of greens and whip them into my lunch. Enjoying cilantro, arugula, spinach, lettuce, and bok choy at the moment. Mmmmm.

Laurinda

Veteran

Beautiful garden, and happy kitty. Love the Bergenia.

Summer switched on suddenly in Wisconsin, from frost to 80s F (upper 20s C) within a couple weeks. We're just starting to harvest micro lettuce and radishes, and the iris and lilacs are already blooming.

rabbit

Veteran

Beautiful garden! I can see why you have neighbor kitties lounging there.

I've been very behind on planting this year (although we do have potatoes coming up - see pic). The strawberry patches are going strong from previous years however and we have been eating them and blueberries are coming along.

The bleeding hearts, columbine, lupin, clematis and peonies are going strong and adding a lot of pink and purple to the front garden.

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JAileen

Veteran

Here's a few shots from our garden:

Raspberries flowering
Tomato planted in a Wall O Water this week
Rhubarb all played out
Grapes
Sugar snap peas just flowering

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Anonymous

Carla, your garden is gorgeous. Lovely kitty too As we were away last week I have yet to put in all my bedding plants and I still have weeding to do. I may pop out to a garden centre tomorrow and see what takes my fancy. Our feont garden by the driveway has three tubs following the path curve and I plan to put geraniums in them. In our back garden, I may go for small bedding begonias as the slugs don't get to them as much. I would love petunias, but they usually end up as just a stalk after one day!

deb

Veteran

Thank you for starting this thread, Carla. Your garden is beautiful. The tulips bloomed here in my part of California three months ago. Here are my gardens as of this morning. Pics 9 and 10 are of the front garden that I started redoing last year. I took all the 1960's shrubbery out except the maple and had planned on having it done. Then I injured my foot so everything came to a halt. I was able to plant under the maple and it came out nicely this spring. The rest of the bed I started working on a few months ago. Next year it will look more developed and less new.

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Carla

Veteran

I envy those with enough space and the season to grow fruit and veg like rabbit and JAileen. What is a 'wall of water'? I've never seen such a thing!

DianeG, there is a groundhog in our neighbourhood, and 2 years ago he ate a pumpkin that volunteered from the compost. ,it was just starting to turn orange and was such a nice shape and size! Other than some beetles on the Lillie's, I don't have too many pests, though we get some slugs on the hosta's if we have a particularly wet year.

Sarah, I had the paths made extra wide. I wanted to be able to walk two abreast along the path, even when creepers crept over the edge, and floppers flopped over.

Deb! I've been checking back to this thread looking forward to your post! You have not disappointed! You have an oasis just outside your door.

In one month, I relocate. The home is reported to have been 'professionally landscaped' but I was there in Feb/March and it was under snow. I will be moving from growing zone 2b to 5!!!

Anonymous

I will be back with pictures later, but I have this red carnation plant that I got from my DD when she was 5 years old from a Mother's Day Tea they had in kindergarten class that is still going strong 15 years later. I have divided them up and planted them all over the place and will divide up some more very soon.

Lost a few trees after this past harsh winter and trying to save some plants and shrubs that were hit hard. (lost a lilac that my mom gave me almost 19 years ago that I loved, but may be able recoup a few shoots from it).

My DH and I are diy when it comes to landscaping and are always collecting seeds, or ground layering shrubs, or starting new plants from other plants. We have saved a ton of money doing this. We have started cultivating maple trees, redbud trees, hollies in our now defunct veggie garden to transplant after losing a bunch of trees after hurricane Sandy and this past year's ice storm.

We grow our own strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. Sorry we did not plant some fruit trees years ago, but at the same time we have lots of deer to contend with, so maybe it was for the best we didn't.

JAileen

Veteran

Carla, I live at about 4700 feet. Our growing season is short so we use Walls O Water to extend it. They are two layers of plastic welded together every couple inches and in a circle. You put them over a tender plant and fill the spaces between the welds with water and it makes a personal greenhouse for each plant. Right now we could still have a frost. Whenever I think I know better than Mother Nature and don't use them, she lets me know who's boss! A few years ago we were in Alaska around Memorial Day and it was warmer there than it was here. Because this is a desert we have big temperature swings between the highs and lows. Usually it's about 30 degrees, but one day last month the difference between high and low was over 40 degrees!

Here are some Walls O Water in my garden. The nice thing is we can reuse them. Some we've had for more than fifteen years.

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Anonymous

You're so lucky you don't get too many pests Carla.. well apart from Groundhogs eating pumpkins I found though, that although we do still get slugs they are a lot less than we used to get since I started to regularly clear the borders of any lying leaves and rubbish, nowhere to hide then!

JAileen, those walls o' water look quite architectural and attractive! Great idea.

gardenchick

Veteran

Thanks for starting this thread--really enjoy all the pics!

So last year I joined YLF and picked the name "gardenchick"--not because I HAD a garden, but because I wanted one! Since then, we moved, and I got my husband to build me a raised garden bed, and we have more lettuces than we can handle! I am thrilled.

These pictures are a few weeks old, I'll have to post updates soon. 1 & 2 are our lettuces, 3 is one of our hydrangea areas.

And #4 is the 10 jars of blueberry jam I made recently--not from our garden but I am proud of them! Anyone else do canning?

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Anonymous

I am enjoying this thread and everyone's photos. I left planting until after our trip and am now trying to catch up.
1. A just planted pot with a yellow/orange theme.
2. Roses. The first flush is nearly over.
3. Exotic milkweed for the monarch butterflies.
4. Clematis on a back fence
5. Macho fern. These make a Kansas garden look tropical
6. Choke cherry tree. The robins love these and are gobbling them down.
7. What is left alive of our poor crepe myrtle after this past winter. This plant was as high as our second story windows before.

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cheryle (Dianthus)

(website)

Veteran

Carla, don't you just love those bright pink flowers on the bergenia? I had those at my last house and they were the first thing to look like spring had arrived with their thick green leaves and pink puffy flowers.

Deb, your heuchera looks lovely as do your gardens.

I don't have a grading certificate but decided to go ahead with the yard anyway. I started planting the front yard. I put in a weeping birch, three bombshell hydrangeas, three minuet weigela, a pink annabelle hydrangea, three everblooming red daylilies, and a few little clumps of purple liatris. I also put three japanese ferns and 8 hostas along the sidewalk to the front and under the window.

We had the fence posts set a week ago and the crew started digging out the back yard for the patio this morning. It started raining at noon so they had to quit. I have three toba hawthornes, another hydrangea and three minuet weigela just waiting for them to finish so they can get planted. I shouldn't have bought them but the patio got delayed a week or they would be settling in already.

I will definitely be following this thread.

Lara, my nickname is the name for perennial carnation. I wonder if that is what your daughter gave you.

Mander

(website)

Veteran

Wow, I have garden envy! I'm really lazy about weeding etc. so ours always looks a bit messy. I didn't know anything about gardening when we moved to this house, and I grew up in a very different environment in any case, so I didn't recognize most of the plants. Some of them I let run wild without realizing just how crazy they could get. I also have a (bad?) habit of picking up things that I think look pretty and planting them willy-nilly around the place, so I have a fairly crazy mixed-up yard.

Here are a few things I've taken snapshots of recently:

- Random purple thing that has self-seeded in the front retaining wall. No idea what it is but I like the little purple flowers.
- Red and white columbines blooming
- Nigella starting to bloom. I thought this one had an interesting curly shape.
- Dicentra going crazy last month.
- Forsythia blooming last month. I started this bush by randomly sticking a twig off a dying tree into the ground, and now it's huge! And I really need to replace that old rotten fence.
- Flowering quince last month, with the random fir (?) tree that I'm thinking about cutting down and the unruly hedge in the background. This is the ugly corner of the yard.
- Close up of the quince flowers.
- Primrose and snowdrops which we transplanted from my husband's childhood home before his parents sold it (the photos are from February).

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