Garden Tour

Welcome to my garden! Today we are taking a holiday from planting. It's gotten so very hot here, and by day's end we are just absolutely drained. The gardens are looking quite nice, and while we've enjoyed working on them, it's time to take a break!

This is the entry to the front door. It used to be a little koi pond with a waterfall, but the raccoons and the herons kept getting the fish! The area dogs also would wander in to take a swim, and they tore up the liner and the waterfalls, so we decided it would be better as something else. This took 6,000 pounds of top soil at (40 pounds a bag) to fill in the space. I also added 12 bags of sand, and about 1,000 pounds of rock got moved out, and another 1,000 moved back in. We love the sound of the fountain, and this area sits in the afternoon shade. It's a great place to sit at the day's end and watch the world go by!

The only thing left is to change out the lighting fixtures. We have a local fellow who makes the most beautiful molten glass path lighting. We've chosen "autumn leaves" as the color to accent the house - they should be great!

This area is the "center garden" for lack of a better name. It used to be a playground with a large Rainbow System play area when we moved in. The previous owners were thrilled when I called them and asked them if they wanted the playground. I moved all the gravel to the back gardens where we do all the vegetable planting, and then enlarged the area a bit, and brought in 8 cubic yard of composted dirt. It took about two seasons to get the blue spruce, the standard pears and all the bushes planted. We have viburnum, quince, peonies, roses, boxwood, penstemmon, veronica, pincushions, coreopsis, primroses, butterfly bushes, hardy hibiscus, monardia, coneflowers, rudbeckia, live forever, aster, liatris, poppies, yarrow, lilies, daisies, and wild violets here. There is also a wren family who live in the 3 story birdhouse that sits behind the bench. Each evening, they sing their songs to let us know they are still here.

This is east of the center garden, just across the pathway. This had absolutely NOTHING planted here when we moved in 6 years ago. It is actually the back side of the pool deck. We have a gunnite poured pool, and the foundation was built up and then backed with wide timber. Not so pretty to look at, but pretty functional. The Kanardi Junipers make a nice windbreak and provide privacy, but they also provide lots of blue juniper berries. The cedar waxwings spend about a week to ten days on their migration route here in my Kanardis, filling up on berries! They also provide a good structure for flowers planted in front of them. I have more viburnum, spirea, dwarf spice lilac, veronica, Stella D'oro, blue eyed grass, Miscanthus grass, daisies, coneflowers, Russian sage, and primrose along here. The center section is lower - that's where you can see through from the pool deck to the rest of the backyard. That break is where there are more boxwoods, and dark barberry bushes on the edge of the pool decking (above and behind the junipers).

This is the backside of the center garden.I love sitting here in the mornings with a cup of tea, listening to the birds singing their morning songs. I don't get to sit out here very long in the season because it gets so hot, but it's a nice place to come when I can. This is also where my 17 year old Otto dog's ashes are buried - under the rose bush where he liked to lay while I worked in the yard.

And last, this is the center garden, looking northward. We love this part of the yard, but there's more to come!