A last look at the garden in April

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Mominthegarden

Bramley Cooking Apple tree

Today is the last day in April, and I just wanted to show you some of what has been growing in the garden this spring. I really think it is picture worthy. Of course, I might be a little biased. 🙂 The picture above is of our Bramley (cooking) apple tree. The blossoms are so pretty! My husband is responsible for pruning the apple trees every winter and I think he’s been doing a nice job. We moved our other (eating) apple tree this winter, so it doesn’t have as many blossoms just yet.

Bramley cooking apple tree blossom

New to this part of the garden are some supports for peas. My friend Susan gave me some useful Hazel sticks which my husband used to make tee-pee like structures. He then wrapped them in chicken wire. The peas climbed the wire quite happily last year, I just didn’t like how it looked in a straight line. I already like this look much better, even before the peas get going! The peas were planted this week.

Newly built supports for our peas using hazel and chicken wire.

Strawberry beds

Here’s a little peek at my strawberry beds. I’ve weeded them a couple of times this spring! They are coming along really well. Last year was an amazing year for strawberries. I have my fingers crossed that this summer will be as good! At the far end of the garden, closest to the red playhouse, we have raspberries growing. They look good this year. This is one fruit that has not thrived for us (yet). This year at least looks promising!

Mallow

On to flowers! This beautiful mallow plant was courtesy of a bird. Well, at least I didn’t plant it. The color is a lovely plum. We had to stake it as we live in a very, very windy area. Nevertheless, it is doing quite well!

Mallow

Ditch Wall Garden

This garden is affectionately called the “ditch wall garden” as I uncovered a ditch wall while creating this garden. I wrote about it here: https://mominthegarden.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/ivy-ivy-everywhere-finding-a-lovely-little-rock-ditch-wall-under-the-ivy/ . The current star of the garden is this primrose. It has really taken off since I planted it last year (given to me from a friend’s garden).

Primrose

Also adding to this little garden is this dark euphorbia. My friend Susan visited me yesterday and she loved the color combination of the euphorbia and my Freeman tulips. 🙂

Freeman tulips and a dark euphorbia

I know I’ve already posted about my tulips, but I had to add a few more pictures of them. They have done so well this spring!

White tulip

This white tulip is new to me this year. I like it, I just didn’t order enough of it!

White tulip close-up

I have a tulip correction, too. I mistakenly called my Foxtrot tulips “Innuendo” tulips. Yikes! The REAL Innuendo tulips are these:

Proper Innuendo Tulips

While the Foxtrot tulips are these:

Foxtrot tulips

How did I mix them up???

My favorites: Ballerina tulips

But without a doubt, my favorite tulips this year are my Ballerina tulips. I have loved every minute of them! The last flower picture is of some flowers that were in a flower pot from last year. I did nothing with the container over the winter. It sat at my back door, completely neglected. So it is funny to be rewarded with these lovely Calendula flowers after so much neglect!

Calendula flowers in a flowerpot

April was quite good to us, don’t you think? I hope your spring is as lovely for you!
Dana

Easter Blessings! and perfect weather for tulips.

Posted on April 20, 2014 by Mominthegarden

Ballerina Tulips

“Happy Easter!” says she who is going to pop back into blog land with no fan-fare or hoopla, but a simple blog post filled with pictures of my tulips. 🙂 I’ve missed posting, and visiting blogs and all that goes on in the virtual world. I had a wee break, but I’m back now. I have so much to show you from my garden and travels!

Ballerina Tulips

I’ve gone a little crazy with pictures of my tulips this year. We live in an exposed area that is surrounded by fields on three sides. There is always wind, even on a calm day! So normally my tulips, actually all of my flowers, get quite a beating. It is rather unusual to see all of my tulips standing and their blooms intact!

Ballerina Tulips

We were in London this past week for the Irish Dancing World Championships (yay for my kids’ teams placing first and third!!!). Ahem, trying to stay focused here after a very fun filled Irish dancing week… During our time away, the tulips not only came up but filled out perfectly. The weather here must have been as nice as it was in London!

Ballerina Tulips & (rather dry) fields

I love tulips. 🙂 O.K., I love all flowers.

Innuendo Tulips

These Innuendo tulips are supposed to be a more solid pink color on the inside, and white on the outside. I only know what they are because I marked it in my book, because they sure don’t look like the picture on the bulb bag! I think they are lovely all the same.

Innuendo Tulips

Group shots of all of the tulips are harder to get just right. I prefer the individual close-ups. But because all of them were still standing and looking so darn good I had to capture them all!

Innuendo Tulips

Blueberry Ripple Tulips

Blueberry Ripple Tulips – isn’t that the best name? Again with these tulips the color is not a match for the lovely picture on the bulb bag – mine are more burgundy-ish instead of true purple. I’m O.K. with that.

Tulips group photo (in the rose garden)

If I were to be critical of this garden, I would have to say that color cohesion is lacking. My problem is that I love all o the different colors and styles of tulips! I would like to try and bring in a deep pink color throughout this garden instead of in a group. I’ll be thinking about that until the fall!

Deep pink tulips

Deep pink/purple like these tulips! That would also tie the two gardens together. Oh the possibilities…

Deep pink tulips with Mr. Fokker Anemone

We moved into our house four years ago. My husband bought these tulips for me on a trip to Holland shortly after we moved in. They were one of the first bulbs we planted. I love little thoughtful things like that. He even picked pink for me! The Erysimum bowles’s mauve in the back on the right goes really well with them too, don’t you think? Mr. Fokker Anemone are probably going to be the one plant throughout my entire yard because it is just so easy and pretty!

Two front gardens

Here’s a look at the two front gardens with all of the tulips. I still can’t believe how well all of the tulips have done this season!

mystery tulip

This last tulip is blooming where I planted Double Late Mount Tacoma tulips, but it certainly doesn’t look like that variety. I’ll have to see as it comes into full bloom.

Dorothy Clive Gardens, England

This last picture is from a garden we visited while en-route to London last week. The Dorothy Clive Gardens were simply lovely, and well worth a visit. I will definitely share the tons of pictures I took there in another post!

Happy Easter to my friends and family and fellow bloggers! Here is to new beginnings!
Dana

Life is … A Bed of Roses!

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Mominthegarden

I love roses, especially fragrant ones. So it was no surprise to my husband when I planned out a rose bed for one of my first gardening projects. And plan I did! The area that is our new Rose Garden was simply grass last year. I marked out the area I wanted with layers of newspapers and added compost and seaweed on top, and a few stones to keep the papers in place. I then left it alone for the grass to break down. As for the next step of picking a border, I have to say that there is something about boxwood plant borders that I really like. I think it is the functionality of the plant! So boxwood is what we went with (as soon as it went on sale locally). The garden had quite a few months of really not looking all that pretty, I have to admit. This doesn’t bother me as long as I have a clear vision of what it is going to look like in the long run!

Last fall I decided that tulips would be a nice flower to have in the rose garden. I planted bulbs and then covered everything up with some local horse manure (see my previous post: https://mominthegarden.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/laying-down-manure/). Some of the tulips are up now (Blueberry ripple & Innuendo). I’m still waiting on a few double late tulips. I was all ready to plant some roses this weekend so I gave the garden a really good digging through! I used my hoe and mixed in/up/around everything! It’s a good thing I love gardening, because this was some seriously hard work! This was it, I was finally ready to call it a garden bed. We planted 3 Rosa Jacques Cartier roses (what a fancy name!), and then 3 roses with names not nearly as exciting. My husband and I have a little debate going on. The debate is whether or not it is worth buying special (read “expensive”) roses via catalogue, or are the inexpensive “sale” ones just as good. We’ll have to wait until this summer to find out which roses are the winners!

How about you, which do you prefer? Buying through the catalogue or locally? I’d love to know!

Dana