A Cottage Garden Stuns All with Its Beauty

As promised here are some more beautiful views in Christy M.'s garden. Views, especially the long shots, are important to me. It is nice to take in the whole garden, take in parts of the garden, and even to take in macro shots of the plants in a garden but for me I want to be wowed by my immediate surroundings. I want texture, color, and beauty. Christy's garden meets all of this and more.

Don't you just love it?

Peonies, weigelia, and irises-what a classic combination that is so beautiful.

More of those views of color, texture, height differences, and defined plants.

Here your eye is drawn past the deutizia to the rose in the distance. Wow.

And the famous beloved garden cottage. This year's color theme in Christy's garden will match this cottage. Look for lots of red and yellow if you tour Christy's garden on June 14th with the Clarksville Montgomery County Master Gardeners.

Penstemon, weigelia, and salvia.

More peonies and long views.

It takes my breath away. This is an old fashioned mock orange shrub. Word of warning, buy mock oranges when in bloom. Buying a mock orange in bloom will not guarantee you get a shrub that smells good but it can at least help. Many of the mock orange shrubs you can buy today do not have the wonderful scent they were known for in our grandparents day.


Finally, one last long shot at the country garden cottage in Christy's garden....

in the garden....

Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden

My Friend Angie's Garden

Garden tours are hot and heavy for me this time of the year and I love to share them with you all so here is one of my favorite gardener's garden--Angie. Many of you know Angie as she is a kind spirit with a gentle, loving, and giving heart and has an awesome Facebook page. She is a very special friend who cheers me when I am down and supports me no matter what. Her kindness during rough times for me will never be forgotten. I have many friends and I am very fortunate to have them as no matter how many beautiful flowers I have, none can really be personal and cheer me the way my friends can--so thank you to Angie and all my friends who choose to be kind and share a word of encouragement or two.

Angie is not, I repeat, not a plant collector. She is by far a designer with an eye toward beauty, practicality, endurance. She plants plants that do well and look good. Her garden always has something in bloom and when one perennial is done, there is another waiting in the wings to take its place. That being said it would appear that Angie is a plant collector because when she finds a plant she likes she has a lot of them. Irises are a favorite for Angie but simply because of their beauty, charm, and their ability to look good (with some maintenance) even when out of bloom.

This time of the year irises shine in Angie's garden.

Japanese peonies (single) are another favorite of Angie's. She likes them because they do not droop like the heavy double peonies favored by so many (including me). How smart is that? For sentimental reasons I will always gravitate to the double peonies but I do have a lot of these Japanese peonies and like them too. Check out how Angie has effectively used the hundreds she has in her garden. Massing is the name of the game in Angie's garden. You all do know to design a good garden you should mass the plants right? Onesies and twosies just don't work. Always try to plant in groups of three, fives, sevens, etc. Using one of something should be reserved for a specimen plant. These might include things like trees, shrubs, a prime perennial like baptisia, or even a peony--if there is a good structure of garden flowers around the specimen to highlight the oneness of it all.

Irises in Angie's garden are used to great advantage in their own bed. Irises need excellent drainage and need space. Planting irises in a bed all of their own makes sense and allows for ease of maintenance as all plants have the same requirements.

Here Angie under planted an evergreen spruce with her Japanese peonies.

The backyard of Angie's house is nearly all garden. She uses paths, art, and plants to great advantage to create beauty, functionality and seasonal delights.

Siberian irises are quite a focal point in Angie's garden.

A concrete path through the garden.

More peonies backed by bonsai evergreens. 

A true red peony--'Red Charm'. Love it!

Angie herself. The sweetest flower in her garden.

Views of the front perennial beds. How lucky are these neighbors to have such a good gardener next door to them?

Japanese peony.

Phlox, 'Rolly's Favorite' silene, and a path in the garden.


More phlox and Japanese peonies....

in Angie's Garden....

Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden

Seeking Sun: The Sunny Perennial Border

From In the Garden

Searching for full sun in Tiger Gardens is like finding the Holy Grail-it just isn't going to happen. There is not much sun here. Oh there is sun, but it is blocked by mature trees. Sun blocking by trees is a really good thing when you live in the south, but not such a good thing if you like colorful cottage gardens like I tend to do. So, in an effort to find a sunny spot for a special plant (Queen of the Prairie) I decided to build a Sunny Perennial Border this past May. I was overly excited and joyful because I could finally grow sun loving plants and grow them well. Plants such as: cannas, rudbeckias, sedums, roses, veronica, red hots, daylilies, brugmansias, and many more found there way into the new Sunny Perennial Border and guess what happened? That's right, the Sunny Perennial got filled up quickly and it also got a bit shady-by the plants in the garden itself.

May 2009

Not to be dissuaded I pushed on and planted this garden just as full as I could. Many of the plantings came from cuttings from other plants in the gardens, or I split plants. Other than the Queen of the Prairie no new plants were purchased for this garden. I tiered the plants down toward the grass path; which is runs east to west and is on the northern side of the bed. Therefore the tallest plants are on the south side of this garden and the shorter ones on the north side and unfortunately some plants became shaded as the garden grew and the slanted more to the south. But you can see in the sun in some of the pictures and it is a great thing to find here!

July 2009

The summer progressed on and with all the great rain (not so much sun) the garden thrived. And even with the bit of shade from taller plants this garden flourished and gives me such joy I kept planting and planting...

Late September 2009

Until the Sunny Perennial Border Garden couldn't hold one single plant more lest it would burst at the seems due to the sunlight it was receiving....or could it be due to the gardener's over enthusiasm with seeking the sun and over planting this garden?:) Time for a rework....

in the garden....seeking the sun.

A Year in the Perennial Garden

January 2008. The garden is quite bland, though you can see the 'bones' and leftover grasses from last year.

March 29, 2008. We are starting to green up with sedums emerging. Some daffodils are showing as well. Pink hyacinths surround the crabapple tree.
April 24, 2008. Sedums are large, and many other perennials are coming out of hibernation.

May 6, 2008. The irises, snow in summer and dianthus are all in full bloom. The 'Hicksii' yews and nandinas are putting on new growth.

May 18, 2008. Now the irises are pretty well past, but the roses are beginning to bloom. The daylilies and 'Chocolate' eupatorium are also prominent.
Late June/Early July 2008. Daylilies, sedum, and coneflowers are all in bloom. The garden is mature now. Mid July 2008. Now the 'Goldsturm' makes a brave appearance, the daylilies are passing, but the coneflowers are still going strong.
Mid August 2008. Now the Eupatorium purpureum, aka Joe Pye weed takes center stage, the sedum is in full bud, brown eyes and coneflowers till hanging on. We can just see the zebra grass in the back of the garden getting quite large. September 10, 2008. Here most flowers have gone by, the only noticeable remaining flowers are the sedum and a bit of the Joe Pye. The garden is still mature and full though.
October 9, 2008. Not much has changed in a month, but you can see the sedum has bronzed, and leaves are falling everywhere.

October 27, 2008. The garden is still pretty much the same, but the skeletons of the past flowers are taking more prominence in the garden. The nandina berries are turning red now.
November 6, 2008. More skeletons and more color in this picture. Here we have mature red berries of the nandina, and in the background you can see the vivid red of the white crepe myrtles; which are still quite small since they are newly planted. You can't really see the zebra grass blooming, but it bloomed beautifully this year.
December 3, 2008. The garden is finished for this calender year though we see plenty of skeletons from flowers gone past. Don't let the picture fool you! There is still life here just waiting for the warmth of spring to bring it all to life once again.

I will try to do a "Yearly Series" each year. I like seeing the changes in the garden in a consolidated manner. I am not sure which garden I will do next year. Any suggestions from you all? Foundation? Greenhouse? Hydrangea? Center Front? Shrub Border? Picket Garden? Heuchera Garden? Woodland Garden? Crabapple Garden? I see it will be a hard choice! This garden was easy since it is the oldest garden and in such a prominent position in the landscape-I hope I figure it out for next year. Happy Gardening all year!

in the garden....

Some Notes on Garden Design

This garden is called the "Perennial Garden" and is my oldest garden, now about five years old. It is the garden people usually see first when they visit my home and it is the garden that gets the most sun in my yard. All of my gardens are mixed borders so even though it is named the "Perennial Garden", it has bulbs, shrubs, trees and herbaceous perennials in it. Initially this garden started life as a rose garden. That was not to be. I have reworked this garden every year in some way or another but it still never felt right to me. I think I may have finally figured it out-the plants were planted too closely and were not massed. This May when my son Brian came for a visit I persuaded him to 'rework' this garden.

I first turned over four feet of the sod in order to enclose the crabapple tree in a garden and make room to spread out the perennials. This area was once a parking area and is loaded with rocks and gravel. Very hard to work. Once the sod was turned over, Brian spread a load of topsoil over the whole area. I then removed the overcrowded plants and massed them in the newly expanded garden. I also added a River Birch, Betula nigra, which has doubled in size in only one year. Brian then mulched the entire bed with newspaper and shredded wood mulch on top of the newspaper. The result is this second picture. Even though the garden extension was new, the garden still looked full and mature when properly planted and I am quite pleased with the result. It now feels right. The bench and garden are slightly elevated and look inward to a concrete parking spot. I added a small rock area for Mr. Fix-it's boat and now only have to weed whack about a three foot strip of long suffering grass. Lessons to remember, go bigger when in doubt and mass perennials. All of these flowers were already in the garden but tended to get lost in the depth, now they shine in the newly expanded garden.

in the garden....