We have Confederate jasmine planted along our chain link fence. I am especially proud of the first one I planted four years ago…it is lush and huge and delightfully fragrant.
In the corner of our fence near the front we have a night-blooming jasmine that I transplanted from the side of the garage because it had gotten too big for the area.
We are “screening” the air condition unit with hibiscus, Mexican bluebells, mandevilla on a trellis, and crotons. We plan to plant a pink oleander over there today.
The front of the house has ixoras and Indian hawthorne.
Along the road we are growing a hedge with silverthorne and plan to add a white oleander today.
Ivylad finally got his roses. We’re planting climbing ones today along the chainlink fence by the gate, and he wants to plant the others in a spot in the middle of the yard.
Outside the front door we have bromeliads, red double impatiens, aloe and hens and chickens, all in pots. I have a hanging basket of white and purple flowers called a Wishbone flower we got yesterday.
Oh, night-blooming jasmine, my absolute favorite smell in the world.
I realized yesterday that the climbing rose I planted about 10 years ago [called “Golden Showers,” I kid you not – relatively thornless and blooms all year with a lovely clear yellow bloom] is dead dead dead. I’m pissed. Effin’ neighbors planted a tree in their yard and now my yard is pretty much all shade.
Of course, most of the other 15 roses are doing fairly well, though I had to move another climber (with teeny pink multi-petal roses) because the crape myrtle is now shading IT completely. And I planted the crape myrtle, so it serves me right. It’s looking a bit peaked, but I think it might make it in its new spot.
I’ve got late daffs and early tulips going now – just yesterday I put the geraniums out on the steps.
Ours grows minature veggies. Potatos and carrots the size of big marbles. Pumpkins the size of golf balls to, very rarely, baseballs. I’m not sure how people managed not to starve to death in this area way back when, because if we grew the veggies as a necessary part of our diet, we’d be screwed.
Right now, my garden is growing small green blobs. They will eventually (I hope) grow up to be a lovely assortment of flowers:
Stella de Oro golden daylilies, buttercup-yellow Oenothera, Sweet William, Echinacea, Monarda, English Lavender, Stargazer lilies, and a few others I can’t remember.
I’m a renter, but I have a deck for the first time in my life, so I got a big barrel-type container and plan to grow tomatoes in it. Then, in pots, I’ll grow basil and parsley. I also want some marigolds out there to attract the pollinators. Last year, I had two amazing tomato plants that yielded enough tomatoes for the entire Italian Army.
The problem is it still gets too cold around here at night, so I probably have to wait until May to plant anything. I am looking forward to it. Yay Spring!
In my front yard, six wormwood bushes which were small and cute when I got them at the nursery and which rapidly shot up to four feet high and 18 inches wide when I planted them. Also a very large rosemary, a dwarf plum tree, various species of sagebrush, a lowboy pyrocanthea, Turkish horehound, and winter fat. I have several kinds of desert wildflowers such as chocolate flower, hummingbird mint, globemallow, penstemon, sundrop, santolina, meadow sage, firewheel, yarrow, and Mexican hat. And scabiosa (which sounds like it should be the name for a disease rather than a flower.)
I just put in a blackberry bush and if it does well I will plant others. In the side yard I plan to plant zinnias, sunflowers, tomatoes, and melons.
The backyard is currently being held hostage by gigantic weeds and it looks like it will be a while before I will regain control of the situation.
Sarracenia purpurea has buds. (America pitcher plant; carnivorous)
Water hawthorne is blooming in the lily pool.
Dranculus vulgaris is in bud next to the lotus pool. The bloom smells of rotten meat, and while it is not carnivorous it is polinated by flies and death beetle, those black bugs with a white skull on their back.
But I digress.
Things are just starting to pop up through the soil. I’m a fairly cheap gardener, so I look forward to volunteers that come up each Spring. Snapdragons, borage, impatiens, flower-of-an-hour, cleomes, marigolds can usually be counted on to supply enough to transplant to most of the pots on my deck. One of my two buddleias did not survive, and took the rosemary with it. A white flowering dogwood is beginning to color up, and the lilac is fully-leafed out. My Mr. Lincoln rose has seen better years, I’d like to replace it with one that has better resistance to blackspot, but still has the same great perfume. Johnny-jump-ups are EVERYWHERE, it’s amazing what a package of seeds a few years ago has yielded. God bless the sedum, been going strong for decades, but, alas, the English thyme has shuffled off this mortal coil. Moss is running rampantly, I have got to scrape it off and dust with limestone-happens every year. Can’t wait to plant basil and tomatoes, and those great Wave petunias. I’ll be on vacation at the end of the month, and I’d like to get all the work done BEFORE the hot weather sets in.
I am a novice gardener but have come to prefer native plants that attract birds and wildlife to exotics (for the most part). I planted trumpet honeysuckle last year and it was a wild success. I started trumpet creeper from seed (!) last year and it was somewhat less of a success which is surprising, most people consider it a weed. I just got six raspberry bushes in the ground and 5 of them are off and running, the sixth may not make it. My attempt to grow pumpkins last year was a victim of the wet June and bacterial wilt, we only got one decent size one but I am trying again.
I have started lupine, bee balm, cardinal flower and salvia from seed inside, I just started to see little teeny tiny seedlings today. I have some sunflower seeds to pland but something in my neighborhood eats the young plants…not the buried seeds, it chomps through the plant stem. Weird.
My father in law planted peonies, hosta, and those flowers that bloom in the late fall…what the heck are those? I am pretty indifferent to all of these, in fact if the peonies died I would be pretty happy.
I haven’t dug up my garden yet, but I’ve had it tilled each year and the dirt is in good shape. Hadn’t actually planned to plant anything this year, as I tend to start off with big plans and then crap out when it comes to all the weeding.
But my sister helped me plant two crysanthamums I got in January as hospital gifts, then came the inevitable trip to the garden store. I bought two rhododendrons and one azalea, plus a “mystery iris”. The latter is one of several volunteers the garden store lost track of, so I don’t know what variety it is, but it cost only a dollar. I’m also going to plant 4 o’clocks, a few mammothe sunflowers, to attract the cardinals, and one tomato plant.
We ought to revive this thread in another month, to see how our plans are going!
I only grow stuff I can eat. Tomatoes, green peppers, jalapenos, eggplant, some eight ball squash this year. (Last year I planted white French squash which got away from me. One got to eight pounds. We cooked it by hollowing it out and filling it with a ground beef, squash and spaghetti sauce mix.)
I also got kohlrabi coming up, some expensive types of lettuce, and some radishes mostly so I can get something to eat quickly. Beans and sugar snap peas are just poking out .
When we moved in the garden was a mess of clay - but seven years of compost and horse manure from my daughter’s barn has done wonders.
The front, which I just planted, has snapdragons, dahlias, mums, petunias, random flowers that were already there, tulips, daffodils and an azalea.
The back has a plum tree, a couple of rose bushes and a bunch of containers on the deck that hols chamomile, lavender, tulips, daffodils, rosemary, tomatos, marigolds, blackberries, strawberries and zucchini.
In the vegetable patch I will have several varieties of tomato & sweet peppers. Theres a patch of asparagus toward one end and I also put in broccoli and collard greens
The rest of the yard has hosts along both side fences, with roses and poenies and a raspberry break.
I have grape vines on the back and front gate, and one by the arbor. There is also a wisteria vine on the back fence and one by the back steps
The front yard is all perennial flowers with a red japanese dwarf maple in the middle.
