Friday, August 26, 2011

"Your gardens must be beautiful!"

This is the comment I get most often while talking to customers at work. They don't believe me when I tell them that they actually look pretty terrible. Working in horticulture, I don't have time to weed in spring or early summer. I also have a dog that is keeping me from planting or spraying in one area. So, here is photographic proof that my gardens are nasty looking.

First is the driveway garden.  A crazy mess at the moment, but I'm slowly getting it under control.  My dog tramples anything near the house in this garden, and everything used as foundation planting along the house.  Quackgrass is taking this garden over quickly... wish I could spray it since pulling it just makes it angry.










 Here is the foundation planting where this is no longer a dog to trample everything.  This is newly planted, and will hopefully start to look better if I can keep it weeded.
Around the corner from the previous picture.  Just need time to clean it up and it will be ok.

And now for the shot that redeems all this ugliness.  My butterfly garden is pretty good.  In the process of some editing, and still needs lots of weeding but I enjoy it and the critters it brings.  No Monarch caterpillars this year though, despite having 3 species of Asclepias for them to munch on.


















This garden is also nice, although not very colorful.  Unfortunately we haven't had the time the last 2 years to grow the huge variety of food we had been.  Despite the fact that this garden didn't get planted until the last week of June and the Tomatoes and Peppers are bearing late, it looks awesome and everything is healthy.



Eggplant 'Thai White Ribbed'
Tomato 'OSU Purple'


Pepper 'New Ace'
Chard 'Bright Lights'

2 comments:

  1. All those neat conifers you sell and no representation in your garden! The flower are great but the green leaves can only give you so much architectual, color and texture interest.

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  2. I do have a few scattered conifers in the gardens, including Pinus
    mugo 'Honeybun', Pinus parviflora 'Adcock's Dwarf', Chamaecyparis
    obtusa 'Fernspray', Chamaecyparais obtusa 'Baby Blue', & Tsuga
    canadensis 'Moonfrost'. On such a small lot I don't have a lot of
    room for both woody plants and perennials. I've focused on my
    butterfly garden which is mainly herbaceous, but there are a few
    shrubs mixed in. I do have a number of dwarf conifers in containers,
    some in combo pots with mini hostas and some in plain nursery pots by
    themselves. There were plans to expand behind the butterfly garden
    and remove all the turf on the east and north sides of the house and
    install more shrubs/conifers with more shade perennials but those
    plans are on hold for a year-ish as we wait for more info on a pending
    opportunity.

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