Hi there! Growing plants from seed never ceases to amaze me. I am surprised every single time that I see the seedling push through the soil! Perhaps I should have a little more faith? 🙂 I started a bunch of plants from seed again this year and they are up and growing. Last year I had a terrible time with slugs eating my small plants once I planted them out in the garden. So I have just started a second bunch of plantings, as back up. So far, I have sweet pea, sun flowers, coleus, ranunculus, delphinium, and I just planted pumpkins (yesterday). Between the slugs and our windy location, the plants need to be quite hardy to survive here!

The weather has been quite unpredictable. We’ve had lots of rain and gray skies, but we’ve been lucky to get glimpses of the sun, too, which is great for lifting my spirits!

My Magnolia Stellata is starting to come into bloom and it is so pretty. I have it in my chicken run, which means that it is ‘caged up’ so the girls don’t peck at it. That’s not a problem for the shrub, just my camera. 😉

One thing I will be focusing more on in the garden, is companion planting. I honestly have not put much thought into this, until now. Starting small, I added some cyclamen to my iris reticulata (per my friend Susan’s suggestion) and to me it was a game changer. So I added some grape hyacinth to my daffodils, and again, I think it looks so much nicer. I’ll be eyeing the rest of the garden a little differently now.

I’m joining Jim at Garden Ruminations for the Six on Saturday meme. Feel free to join in!

Enjoy the tour!

In Peace,
Dana

1 – Magnolia Stellata. This was a gift to us two years ago for our 25th wedding anniversary (what a super gift!). I love how unusual the flowers are. Even more, I love how early it blooms!

2 – Helleborus Harvington Double Red. I’ve shown this one before, but perhaps a bit too soon. This hellebore is only now coming in to its full glory. It is living up to the ‘lenten rose’ description sometimes given to hellebores, with its late winter/early spring blooming.

3 – Companion planting of Iris reticulata and Cyclamen. I’m very happy to report that all of the iris bloomed, despite me shifting them at the start of their season. They were spread out, and I moved them close together in a cluster. I got this idea following my visit to Altamont gardens where all of their iris reticulata were planted in clusters for more visual impact. Copying is the greatest form of flattery, right?

4 – My seed trays. The image is deceiving as the bottom right corner pic is taken from quite high and the other three are close-ups! Bottom right is mostly sunflowers with sweet pea in the bottom right of it. Coleus are in the bottom left picture, ranunculus are top right – those corms were from last year, so I’m happy even though all of them didn’t sprout up (yet?). And top left are some delphiniums. I’ve only had hit or miss luck with those, but the hits are always good!

5 – Daffodils with grape hyacinth. This is more a picture of a blue sky than the flowers!

6 – Anemone pink and purple. I like these guys in the garden as they are no maintenance and they spread. Who doesn’t like a little purple in the garden here and there? I now also have a pink variety growing, and I’m honestly not sure how they got there but happy to have them.

These big bunches of brightness have truly lifted my spirits during these gray days. We could have a blue sky in the morning, and hailstones in the afternoon – it’s just the way it is. I am so glad to have them and I truly go out into the yard just to look at them. 🙂

Thank you so much for stopping by. Let me know if you have any favorite companion plantings that you’d recommend!