Showing posts with label Non-Pool Garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Non-Pool Garden. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

The June Garden


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The garden season is in full swing now so I thought I'd share some pictures from my current garden. I have been pretty busy getting the new garden to be ready and even have some gardens out there now. It has been fun but very time consuming and slow going. In the meantime I will enjoy this garden that I have come to love so very much. 

Hollyhocks are not a favorite plant of mine but I allow a few of them to grow. They look nice right up until the point they get rust and flea beetles. Fortunately they self seed themselves and grow on their own with little help for me or I would not have any here.
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This garden is a very happy garden. The area slopes down so I planted taller plants in the low area. The effect is undulating and pleasing when looking at it from above and even from below since you look up at the plants. In another month or so the garden will be filled with the blooms of 'Limelgiht'. Right now it sports some rose campion, daylilies, astilbe, 'Annabelles', oakleafs, the wine bottles, and Asiatic lilies.
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The Sunny Perennial Border is strutting its stuff in the form of knockout roses, grasses, and other various perennials like daylilies, crinums, phlox, and coneflowers.
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June also means it is hydrangea time! The one pictured above is 'Bluebird' and I am really liking the bloom because it is quite large. I grow a lot of hydrangeas but have been busy moving them to the new garden. This one will leave after our house is built. So far I have moved about a dozen PG hydrangeas and about eight oakleaf hydrangeas. The PGs are doing wonderfully and I suspect they will bloom this year. They line our long driveway on the edge of the field. I'll post a picture if they bloom. The oakleafs are struggling. I had to raise up their garden bed so Mr. Fix-it helped by using his tractor to scoop soil to surround the oakleaf hedge. I then edged the garden with rocks I moved from here. Oakleafs are one of those hydrangeas that simply will not do well if they are left to grow in standing water. My soil out there does drain well but it is rather heavy so I decided to raise their bed. Moving any shrubs in the spring is iffy business since I have no way to water them in the summer but so far this year has been awesome for rain. The plants will have to hold their own and I'll help as much as I can. I did move several large crepe myrtles. I find it vital to move crepe myrtles in the spring because it seems that if they are planted in the fall they will get lots of cold injury. The crepe myrtles are doing well-four out of the five are anyhow. DSCN7454
This is My Mother's Hydrangea. I got cuttings from Maine in the winter and was able to propagate this one hydrangea. It is getting quite large now after ten years. It will for sure be moving with me after the house is built. I find these kinds of hydrangeas (H. macrophylla) do much better when planted near the house and not out in the garden on their own. 

Do you want a tip to help keep your hydrangeas looking blue? My husband loves pickles and can sometimes eat a lot of them. Being a recycler I hate to just throw away the leftover pickle juice so I decided to pour the leftover juice on this hydrangea. I only poured it on the hydrangea when rain was imminent in order to dilute the vinegar (the base for most pickle juices) a bit. You all do know that blue hydrangeas come from an acid soil right? And vinegar  is an acid so it helps to make the hydrangeas blue. Well, there's my secret to blue hydrangeas--pickle juice--it really helps! You heard it here first!
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You are actually looking at four gardens in this view. It looks kind of like one large one doesn't it? The Asiatic lilies grace a small garden next to an arbor, behind it is my Sidewalk garden with all sorts of frilly things, then the Front Center Garden shows its stuff with the tall bearded irises, and finally the Roadside Garden brings up the rear with its backbone of shrubs. Directly on the other side of the Roadside Garden is the road. The trick to making gardens look so full and front and center is to layer them. Between each of these gardens are wide grass pathways. If I were to post a winter picture you'd understand better but I just wanted you to know this is not one large garden.This is the view visitors get as they approach my front sidewalk. I never tire of it when I park my car either.
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These hydrangeas are of two different varieties. In the front with the round fluffly balls are the 'Annabelle' (Hydrangeas arborescens) and behind the Annabelles are the oakleaf hydrangeas (Hydrangeas quercifolia). Some Hydrangea paniculatas are blooming but the big show with the paniculatas (PG and Limelight and a few others) will be in another month or so.
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'Raspberry Profusion' abelia is a bee magnet. I like the abelias because they are native, easy to grow, and bloom for a very long time....

in the June garden....
Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden

Friday, June 17, 2011

The New Non-Pool Garden One Year Later

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You may remember that last summer we decided to get rid of our above ground swimming pool. The new large area left many possibilities for me to garden in and wow, has it ever come a long way. I thought I'd update you all today with some pictures from the new space and tell you of some successes and failures in this garden. The above picture shows a ground level view of the two gardens and path down the center to the storage shed. It also shows my beloved BJ who passed away the day after this picture was taken. I love this picture of him and it is how I remember him-happy days.
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This is how the same area looked two years ago when we still had the pool (I for some reason can't find a picture of it from last year). Now look at the shed and you can compare the two photos as to how I had to shape the new areas. The garden on the right was seriously extended and evened out to form a long sloping line down to the shed. The garden on the left-well, there was no garden on the left when we had the pool. There was a garden actually but it only contained a red cedar and two oak trees.

From In the Garden

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The left side of the pathway now contains an extended garden with lots of hostas, Solomon's seal, smilacina, wildflowers like dog tooth violets and bloodroot, a few Annabelle hydrangeas, three 'Limelight' hydrangeas, 3 Mount St. Helens azaleas, a variegated deutzia, daylilies, spireas, a Japanese kerria and the crown jewel-a sourwood tree. Other than the 'Limelight' hydrangeas most of the plants are small and are kind of hard to see but they are coming along fine. Soon the daylilies and hydrangeas will be blooming and they will stand out nicely.
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The right side of the garden area needs no blooms to look great-but we do have a few. The Tango 4 U lilies are just going by but now the 'Annabelle' and oak leaf hydrangeas are taking center stage-right behind some orange daylilies and deep purple hollyhocks.


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Here is a close up of the hollyhocks. These are some old fashioned hollyhocks and I've waited not less than three years for the blooms. The deep purple looks fantastic with the orange of the daylilies and purple leaves of the 'Burgundy Flame' Japanese maple.


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Back to the garden. Here is a close up of some of the plants. I garden mainly with shrubs and trees and use perennials for tapestries and blooms-fleeting though they may be we must have blooms right? The 'Golden Jubiliee' (yellow leaved perennial in the center front of this garden) is a perennial that you really don't need to have blooms to enjoy. This perennial was newly planted last fall and wow. It shines in the garden. This is even before it has bloomed! I can't wait to see what they look like.


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Here we are looking down the right side of the garden area. I call this garden my 'Greenhouse Garden' since the greenhouse forms the eastern boundary of this long garden. These gardens are viewed from the deck so I like to keep color going all year long. Here I show you my border of annuals. Here in Tennessee we can plant pansies in late September and expect them to still be blooming in June and sometimes in July. The hot weather does tend to fade them away though so in April I interplant impatiens in and among the pansies. By the time the pansies fade away the impatiens will have taken over.
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One last picture of the textures. I chose to go big with this garden and planted in mass. Some of the plants I planted last fall did not return this year but most of them did, or at least one or two of the masses I planted returned. This is good. They include: little blue stem (one of three returned and I'll be moving it soon) and most of the 'Red Riding Hood' penstemons (one of five returned). Most likely this garden does not have enough sun or I planted the plants too late. Some people have the challenge of having too much sun whereas I have too little. Fortunately enough for me there are many perennials and shrubs that tolerate part sun and I think I have discovered them all.



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One last long shot from the south looking north at the new Non Pool Garden....
 
in the garden....

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

Friday, September 24, 2010

Relandscaping the Now Missing Pool

From In the Garden

See that huge sand pit in my yard? The area used to house a nice above ground pool that at one time looked like this:

From In the Garden
Not too shabby and a most inviting sight on a hot summer's day. The reason why the pool is no more is the trees. Over the past nine years that we've lived here our trees have grown phenomenally and had really closed in on the pool. Trees drop leaves and acorns-tons of acorns. The maintenance on this pool just got to be too much for me so I suggested to Mr. Fix-it, quite strongly I might add, that we sell the pool. Enter Craig's List and said pool is sold immediately!

We spent one hot day in early August taking the pool down. It was hot, sweaty, and dirty work. At least we were in the shade while taking the pool down. Because we didn't want to leave the very nice buyer out in the cold in the 100 degree heat in full sun without a pool we (Mr. Fix-it and I) offered to help him set it up. I'm not going to make this a long story but after taking the pool down and nearly having the frame set up in its new home a strong gust of wind came through and blew the pool down. It was not a pretty sight. Then a strong thunderstorm came through. Whew! From sweating in 100 degree heat to freezing and soaking wet we had quite the day with this pool. Fortunately, Sunday dawned nice and the new owner of the pool did some work on the pool overnight so that when we convened to work on setting up the pool again, all went smoothly. It helped that his neighbors came over and helped too. You really need a lot of hands when setting up a pool. The big rush with the buyer of the pool was that his wife was due to have a baby within the week and they really wanted their new pool set up. Mission accomplished but not without some pain and some good memories. Just let me tell you that taking down pools and setting them up is not for the faint of heart. It is a very difficult job! But when all was said and done Mr. Jacob got a very nice pool for a very reasonable price and we got this....

From In the Garden
13 September 2010

The final product came out rather well I think. A new path down the center of where the pool used to be located and a lot of shrubs and perennials complete the landscaping job of the pool area. Lest you think making a new garden is as easy as snapping pictures and walah it is done-I added the dates in to show you just how long it took me to complete this huge job. We initially took the pool down the 30th of July. Of course, draining the pool and preparing it for movement began a few days earlier. The landscape job is pretty much complete with the exception of a few wheelbarrows of mulch on this date, 24 September 2010-about eight weeks later!
From In the Garden
26 August 2010
First of all it took me a few weeks to find the time and energy to start back filling the large hole where the pool used to be. The delay was in part due to the intensely hot temperatures we experienced in August, but I also needed to really get myself psyched to do what needed to be done-namely to back fill the large hole left by the pool. Since our property slopes the pool was dug into a slight hill where at its highest point there was a two foot drop off from the outside garden to where the pool used to be located. Here we can see where some of the drop off has been filled in. I used fill from edging my other garden beds where I moved approximately 40 wheelbarrows full of soil and grass. This soil was unceremoniously dumped into the hole. I wished I could have edged all the beds because that would've cut down my trips to get soil, but with the drought the ground was practically like rock and no edging was going to work. Enter the local quarry for some soil for back fill.
From In the Garden
2 September 2010

I took five trips downtown (about a 13 mile trip one way) to the local quarry where I had Mr. Fix-it's truck loaded with about 1.5 tons of soil each trip. This soil, while not ideal, was handy and available and they loaded it for me. I had to unload it -with a snow shovel. Surprisingly it only took me about 1.5 hours to unload the truck after each trip. These trips were spread out over a week or so based on my schedule and the heat.

As I was back filling I decided to fill the left side of the hole first and plant as I went along-can you say inpatient? That was me! When I say left side I mean of the new path area and where the pool used to be. You can clearly see where the left side of the hole has been partially filled in the picture above. When I got an area completely filled in I planted plants in that area. I surmised they'd do better in the ground than in the pots they had been sitting in all summer. I had had about 40 pots full of plants waiting in the shade near the water spigot just to be planted. The plants were looking rough as it is difficult even with regular watering to keep a shrub or even perennial alive in a small pot in 100 degree weather. I don't know how nurseries do it! After I planted I watered. Did you know a water molecule is a 'sticky' molecule? It will make a chain with other water molecules and try to fill up all spaces where there is no water. Hence, after watering the left side of the new beds I woke up in the morning to find that the water had spread to the center of the former pool area where the path was to go. Can you see the water line in the dirt in the above picture? This is where the water finally ran out and stopped moving. It had saturated all it could then gave up. The 'soil' I used for back filling is creek bottom soil and is a very fine particle soil. I have used this soil before and find it extremely heavy. The saving grace is that there is about 4-6" of sand under it (the former base of the pool). I'm hoping this will make drainage better since this area of my yard is naturally low anyhow and seems to draw water; not that we've had any this summer.

From In the Garden
7 September 2010

Ah, here we go! We can now see my plan for the space. It took more than one month but it is coming together nicely. The grass path (six feet wide to allow for the lawn mower and easy access to the shed) is in place. All grass was removed from the area surrounding the old pool and transplanted to its new location. Just look at the pool picture (second picture on this post) to see the lovely grass that I worked so hard to fertilize, grow, and weed-only to rudely move it into a new location; all with my trusty shovel. The grass this time of the year is mostly dormant or mostly weeds. I grow fescue and I tell you this summer has been difficult for it. Nonetheless, the soil and sand are covered and the grass will settle in quickly. As an added good measure to get a good stand of grass in this area I sprinkled Rebel grass seed on top of the transplanted grass. By next spring you'll never know it had been transplanted.

From In the Garden
7 September 2010

A word about the garden on the right side. Like I said before, I planted as I went along so that once one part of the garden was done I did not need to go back to it. Part of this new garden in the pool area encompassed the 'Greenhouse Garden' that was an already established garden. I needed to change this garden because my whole vision for this area had changed with the removal of the pool. The change involved moving some 'Annabelle' shrubs and perennials. This part of the job, while time consuming, was actually not difficult since I had a good idea what would work, what I wanted and how I planned to plant.

First and foremost was the fact that since the garden area is about 75 feet from my deck I needed a big impact and onesies and twosies were not going to cut it. Nor would only perennials. My line of attack was to plant all shrubs in the old pool area and gradually step down to perennials as you come closer to the deck and up the slight hill toward the greenhouse. There are two trees in the greenhouse garden already (Crabapple and 'Burgundy Flame' Japanese maple) and these two trees did not move. In the planted right side of the garden are: 9 red astilbes (transplanted), 9 'Magnus' coneflowers, 9 'Ruby Star' coneflowers (all coneflowers purchased for $1 per pot markdown at Lowes), 9 'Golden Jubilee' agastache (also $1 markdown) , 3 'Striatum' geraniums (Jung Seed), 6 'Tango 4 You' lilies ($1 markdown), 15 great blue lobelia started from seed (thanks Catherine), 10 turtleheads (cuttings), 2 columbines (markdowns), 3 cimicifugua racemosa (divided and transplanted), 3 Japanese anemones (transplanted), 2 chrysanthemums (transplanted), St. John's Wort (gift from Naomi), 'Globosa Nana' cryptomeria (transplanted), 3 Annabelle hydrangeas (moved from next to greenhouse to under crabapple), woodland phlox, woodland asters, hardy ageratum (all transplanted), a variety of sedums (already there), 'Immaculee' peony (already there), asters (already there), 3 oakleaf hydrangeas (seedlings transplanted from elsewhere in the garden-they are now about 5 years old and 5 feet tall), iris cristata, 6 'Adagio' ornamental grasses (moved from around the pool and divided), several daylilies, little bluestem grass, 'Goldsturm' rudbeckia, 12 'Red Riding Hood' penstemons, a clump of heliopsis, and about 8 clumps of the 'Autumn Sun' rudbeckia. The area is quite large so though it sounds like a lot I list the plants mainly for my own records and not really for you all. I'll tell you why, most of the time when I read blogs I don't really pay attention to the lists of plants so I'm sure you all won't either. Just suffice it to say the perennials and shrubs are all massed in areas I think they will do best based on soil and light conditions. All plants are tiered from shortest to tallest in the garden based on the vantage point. I must say this though, there is another path behind this garden that separates a maple tree and groundcover from this particular garden so that other path has a completely different look to it from its side of the garden. The area is quite large but I seemed to have filled it up quickly. I can never imagine just how quickly until I plant.

On the lower end of the right side of the path (where you see mainly plain dirt) I planted: 4 'Limelight' hydrangeas, 3 'Tardiva' hydrangeas, 5 doublefile viburnums, and a 'Diablo' ninebark. The below picture shows a better view of all the shrubs. See the limelight? It is happy and hopefully will be happier next year now that it is in a moister area that receives more sun.

From In the Garden
8 September 2010

The doublefile viburnums are the anchor in this garden alongside the fence and under the oak tree behind the 'Limelights'. You cannot see them now because they are rather small and a bit hidden. The 'Doublefiles' were all bought at Rural King during their 75% off sale for $5 a piece. A steal for sure. Viburnums are low maintenance and I hear the doublefiles are the best. We shall see. Hopefully if they do well they will grow to 8-10 feet tall and wide. They will make a nice cushion against the wood fence and beneath the oak tree behind the hydrangeas. There are various other perennials planted in here. Some dwarf iris, tiarellas, nicotiana, hostas, ferns, and hellebore seedlings as well.

From In the Garden
14 September 2010

Here we are with all hydrangeas moved and in place as we walk along the path at ground level. Pictures just don't really give the reader the feel for the area unfortunately but walking along you can at least see it up close. Some cardboard has been placed for mulch. All cardboard was received via another Freecycler who just moved to the area. I find cardboard great for under shrubs where voles are not a major issue. The cardboard has since been covered by hardwood mulch. Prior to removing the pool this area would be inaccessible and the way to the shed would be to the far right and to the far left of the 'Limelight' hydrangeas. What a difference for me!


From In the Garden
14 September 2010

Looking up toward the house we can get a different perspective of the garden. Paths are one of the most important features in a garden and I like my paths to be functional yet a bit mysterious and enjoyable when traversed. Coming up from the storage shed this is my view.

While I listed my plants for the left side of the path I did not list them for the right side. They are as follows: sourwood, three spireas, 3 'Limelight' hydrangeas, 'Duet' variegated beautyberry, 'Soft Touch' mahonia, yellow and orange daylilies (transplanted from around the pool-you can see them in the pool picture), hostas, pachysandra, and hellebores. I have intentionally kept this side simple due to an awful lot of shade and competition from a cedar tree. The sourwood tree will be the focal point once it gets larger (which will take years probably). It is situated in the curve of this bed where it is sandwiched between the canopy of an oak and a cedar tree. I have read where sourwoods do not like root competition. Right now there is none but in a few years I suspect roots will grow to fill in this garden area; therefore I've tried to use hardy plants here. I've found 'Limelight' hydrangeas actually do fairly well under trees because these large and mature ones were growing under a black gum tree. I was able to pull them out bareroot due to the drought. The roots surprised me because they spread more than four feet from the shrub's trunk. The problem I found that I did not like was the roots were not very deep; which is not good for survival in the typical drought conditions Tennessee seems to experience each summer. We'll see how they do in their new location where there are still roots, but the area is moister.

Wow, this is a long post and one I've been working on for a while now. I am not done with this area. I did do a landscape design for this garden but it is not quite finalized. I will share that at a later date....

in the garden....


Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team,

In the Garden