My favorite garden/Your favorite garden(s)

[tsbccowboy]

My favorite garden, show your favorite garden(s).

Most of my plantings have been to whatever space I can find. There is one area of the gardens that I like the looks of in spite of not much planning for looks. My plan for this year is to rearrange Hostas to make the gardens look better.


6/29/14
The small pine tree on the lower left wasn't planted by me.


5/31/12


5/28/11
This one has a Cowboy Slug Cafe showing


6/9/08


5/24/07


7/20/05


6/1/05

[harryshoe]

Cowboy,
That's what I call evolution! Your bed looks great. You do not need to rearrange anything, unless things get too crowded.

[tsbccowboy]

Harryshoe,

I'm happy with this garden; it is everything else that I would like to improve.

Welcome to this forum!
Cowboy

[McTavish]

What a beautiful garden Cowboy. What a lot of grass! You are like Faye in that. She has a lot of grass too. Grass = a blank slate for me.

You invited us to share our favorite garden. You may be getting more than you bargained for. I was intending to show this garden all last summer but first I lost all my early 2014 pictures. In the fall I had them retrieved by professionals (big cost and leap of faith). Now seems as good a time as any to show this garden. Here is the story.

Several years ago Faye's hubby brought me some wonderful, huge, hollowed out logs split lengthwise. He put them by the road off the end of the driveway. I visualized what I wanted to do with them but was physically unable to do it. The entrance to our house has been a mess all these years. I had a collection of pots just on the outside of the wall but almost never took pictures beyond that point because it was a heap of dirt with any old thing thrown on top. Last spring Faye phoned me and said Murray was on his way up with the bobcat (? small machine capable of lifting and dragging and digging). I quickly dismantled the pot collection (that sounds funny). He first had to move that pile of dirt and level the area. He dragged those wonderful hollow logs into place and propped them up so they would stay. This all took less than an hour. For someone who does things the hard way and by hand this continues to be a miracle to me.

Once I had the basics I was off and running. Faye was up a couple times to help me shovel the topsoil out of the truck into these planters. It is surprising to me how much they took. What great neighbors. I will be forever in their debt because this garden would never have happened without them. It was the garden I looked at and photographed the most all last year. It also has become my most prime growing area. It has east facing sun then bright shade. I want to grow every plant I have in this garden. Cathedral Windows, in the middle, had no color before because I had it in too much sun. In this garden it looked perfect into October.

I had to search to find these pictures showing what it looked like. Here are a couple before and afters.

7-2-12 (21) by mctavish6, on Flickr

Before - same view - same cat

10-14-12 (9) by mctavish6, on Flickr

7-AB02~1 by mctavish6, on Flickr

Coffee Cup for scale

4-21-14 (10) by mctavish6, on Flickr

4-21-14 (17) by mctavish6, on Flickr

5-4-14 (4) by mctavish6, on Flickr

I took creeping Jenny from around the yard to make a kind of lawn.

5-29-14 (40) by mctavish6, on Flickr

I love stumps and they go with the theme of this area. This stump was found in the field above the house.

7-4-14 (86) by mctavish6, on Flickr

I was always inspired by The Stumpery, a garden in England that was shown in a couple of Diana Grenfell's books. This is my small attempt to capture the feeling.

7-28-14 (163) by mctavish6, on Flickr

The Creeping Jenny worked

8-22-14 J (29) by mctavish6, on Flickr

The front section is reserved for mini's. You can walk right up to it.

IMG_1270 by mctavish6, on Flickr

In August. The addition of gravel made a big difference. I can't wait to see this garden come spring.

IMG_2066 by mctavish6, on Flickr

And last...These tall stumps were put in place like guardians to the entrance to the woods. They are taller than I am so I feel like a hobbit when I walk through them.

IMG_2071 by mctavish6, on Flickr

[tsbccowboy]

McT,

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I feel like a kid in a candy store with a week's worth of lunch money in my pocket and no parent in sight!

I can't believe the difference between May 9 and August 22! I thought it was supposed to take years to look that good. You are truly an artist with your gardens and your camera!

That talk about "What a lot of grass" and dismantling "the pot collection" could raise a few eyebrows if it wasn't said on the Hosta forum.

The "What a lot of grass" is mostly my next door neighbor's. My next door neighbor is, well, next door.

Hope more gardens get posted,
Cowboy

[kHT]

Some great photos of folks gardens! Keep them coming. tsbccowboy, another great post. I was asked this past week to put the history of our gardens on my blog
so I have been working hard on it. Lots of memories.

[tsbccowboy]

Kht, What is your blog address?

More gardens, please!

Cowboy

[kHT]

http://karmahappytoesgardens33.blogspot.com/

I'm just getting started so give me a week as I have 20 years of photos to look at. Will try to post a couple photos soon.

[harryshoe]

This is the west side of my front yard as it looked in spring of 2014. Its shaded by a wall of arborvitae and a mature spreading Kwansan Cherry. The bed began with azaleas. Later came the hosta, heucheras and ferns.

Hosta across the front are Halcyon, Olive Bailey Langdon, June, Captain Kirk and Gold Standard. Partially hidden behind them are Whirlwind,
Paradise Expectations and Bressingham Blue.

Due to the increasing size of Bressingham Blue, Captain Kirk, Paradise Expectations, and the fern were transplanted in fall of '14. The azaleas were pruned and the statue moved to the spot vacated by CK.

[DelawareDonna]

I live in an active retirement community. Approximately 40' from my front door an island was created years ago by walking paths. It was unsightly and ugly. About 4 years ago with the condo association's approval, they began clearing it out in stages, and I began creating a hosta garden for the community to enjoy. It is still a work in progress.

[DelawareDonna]

Trying to upload more then one photo.

[Moccasin]

So great to find familiar names and photographers of favorite gardens. We had such a lovely community on GWeb with unlimited photos but as usual, nothing stays the same. It is such a pleasure, such a relief, to come to Hallsons for my hosta fix.

I'll try to post one photo at least of MY garden. I named it Garden of The White Dove. I have three tea plants, meaning camellia sinensis, the camellia from China whence the tea leaves for white, green, and black teas are taken. I'm reading about Chinese garden style, and I am attempting to emulate the style as much as I can here in Mobile AL, near Mobile Bay. My space for hosta is now walled in north and south with 7 foot wood privacy fencing on both ends; a 100 foot long 7 foot high chain link fence covered in evergreen jasmine (trachelospermum jasminoides) along the east side; and the western fourth side is confined behind the wooden 50 foot long 10 foot tall lattice shade screen, a 25 foot long stuccoed wall of my Teahouse studio, and then another bit of the 7 foot high wood privacy fence. It is a quiet place to meditate, watch the birds and insects, see the wind moving the spanish moss hanging from huge old camellias like umbrella trees, and let the garden tell me what it needs next.

Except for one experimental bed along the driveway beneath some young palms, my hosta are in containers. I've done this only since we bought this 25 x 100 ft strip of land from our best neighbor ever, who lives behind us. To keep in touch, there is a 5 foot wide gate in the chain link fence. I am impressed by the Hanging Hosta of Hampshire (videos on YouTube) which has over 1600 hosta in a space smaller than mine, I believe.

Here is one photo of my garden. I'll have to resize the ones I want to show, they are much too large as they are.

[tsbccowboy]

Thank you HarryShoe, DelawareDonna & Moccasin for posting photos of your slice of Heaven!

DelawareDonna, I bet that bench is used much more often since you created the beautiful garden!

Did you notice most of the photos are clickable to a larger photo?

Cowboy

[McTavish]

It is nice to see more GW people here.

Harry your garden looks wonderful. Watch out for Olive Bailey Langdon. Either you Halcyon is huge or OBL isn't fully grown.

Donna, your neighbors must love you. How nice to create that beautiful space for everyone.

Mocc. I think you may not need to downsize your photos. You are on flicker if I remember right. I put my pic's on Flickr at 2000 but when I copy the BB link I choose 1024. That seems to work. If someone wants to see it larger they can click on it and it will show the original size on Flickr.

[DelawareDonna]

Mocc - Looking at that photo I imagine that you have created a beautiful sanctuary.

This is my small summer garden that surrounds my condo. Full sun most of the day. My late husband and I rushed to purchase our unit years ago because of the grounds surrounding it.

[DelawareDonna]

More photos -

[DelawareDonna]

And lastly - my Spring garden - very simple with a white geranium border surrounding Siberian Irises.


Sorry for the screw up. This was just for hosta gardens. How do you delete a post??

DD

[kHT]

Some more great garden photos, thank you for sharing!!

[funnthsun]

My favorite garden? Well, let's see. I'm in the middle of a move this year, from NC to VA. Soooooooo.....

This was my newest garden in NC, just starting to fill in better.


Of course, NOW, it's been completely dug up and it's all been put in temporary rows awaiting spring rearranging and placement in the new garden.

and here is the new garden, LOL


Oh, man, I have A LOT of work to do!

[Moccasin]

Funn, a lot of work? You sure do! However, taking them with you is better than starting over with baby hosta.

Here are some of mine up in Massachusetts waiting to go south. They were dormant when the PODS left there.