Late June walkaround

june panorama
Click on images for larger view. Plant IDs from memory. (Don’t hold me to them.)

In an email earlier this week, Hank over at Lake County pointed out that I haven’t posted many garden pictures lately, and he was wondering how things looked. Actually, I’ve taken tons of pictures this season. Pictures of plants I wanted to write about. Pictures I wanted to make points about. Most got downloaded, edited and PhotoShopped. But I just haven’t had time to take them any farther.

So last night I did a quick walkaround and took some long shots just to record the peri-solstice garden and refocus a little on the big picture and not the individual plants (and weeds). While I love individual plants, the long shots make me appreciate the overall feel of the place in ways that I sometimes forget when I’m actually in the space.

The upper garden (below). My lame rock garden is in the center of the lawn. Miscanthis floridulus that blocks the road is about half its mature height. Various shrubs in the border are starting to come along. I like the old saw, “The first year they sleep. The second year they creep. The third year they leap.” But between the rabbits and the deer, I have many second years when it comes to shrubs.

upper garden

Front bed on the north side of the house. Goatsbeard (Aruncus) along the fence by the driveway. (Wild grape and clematis winds through it.) White valerian flowers float above. Big swath of yellow from evening primrose. Spirea flowers provide a little purple.

front bed

Did I make these curves by design (below, left). Maybe. Blind sow gets an acorn every now and then. Alchemilla and lysimachia provide yellows to right of walk. Grays are lambsears (foreground) and artemisia (background). Plume poppy provides bulk behind porch with autumn clematis climbing pole. Adjacent green mass is a tangle of mint and wild asters. I can’t take credit for the borrowed scenery of marsh and woods in the back. This one is really worth clicking on to appreciate. Pergola (right) with bittersweet, spirea (foreground) and Persicaria (background).

walk viewpergola

Blue bottle bed featuring scotch thistle, burdock, ornamental grasses, verbascum, phlomis, lots more.

blue bottle bed

The dry bed. Artemisia, verbascums, alliums (some flowering, some old), lots of cacti and succuents — hardy and tender — in pots and troughs.

dry bed

Veggie garden (yeah, I use a lot of garlic) and water garden (needs some work).

veggie gardenwater garden

The wet garden. Low spot stays wet most summers. Tradescantia, lysimachia, filipendula, turtlehead, willows, hibiscus, monarda, veronicastrum. It’s pretty plain now, especially since the tradescantia closes up in the evening. But this will be the most spectacular part of the garden before long.

wet garden

My goal is that someday my garden will look as good as the borrowed scenery I have as a backdrop.

ridge

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

13 thoughts on “Late June walkaround”

  1. Craig: You are certainly blessed with much natural scenic beauty. Love the gardens and that blue bottle tree…hmmm…really like it! Aruncus fabulous and that lady’s mantle is quite the statement. Thanks for posting all of those!

  2. The statement the lady’s mantle makes is this: I grow and spread very well here. It’s nearly up to weed status, especially because I can’t bear to rip out volunteers.

  3. Thanks, indeed, Craig- your garden is beautiful and some of your plants make me jealous – love the alchemilla, aruncus and verbascum! The blue of the bottles looks good, too, as it does in the garden of Pam/Digging.

    But how odd it must be to compose plant compositions near the house, while that scenery looms, always present, as a contrast to your efforts. We’ve only gardened on 1/4 or 1/2 acre lots…such grandeur seems intimidating!

    Annie at the Transplantable Rose

  4. Oh wow, Craig… you know you had me at “verbascum” but now that I see the scotch thistle, too, I’m absolutely drooling.

    I appreciate that you consider the borrowed views and the photos show that you use it to your advantage. That’s something that most of the rest of us could learn a thing or two about from you, I think.

    By the way, your garlic looks nice and green yet. Mine are starting to brown already and I harvested the first bulb from the most advanced set yesterday.

  5. Borrowing the scenery is mostly luck. I appreciated it. But I can’t claim that I’ve actually designed to enhance it. About the only thing I can recall is considering taking out a 40-foot spruce to improve the view from the patio. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I limbed it up so that you could see some of the view under the canopy.

  6. I visited a friend this week and found her screensaver to be the third photo – of the front of your house – and I have to say it’s damn lovely and has a homey feel to it, too. S

  7. Cool. I would never have thought. And I almost left that image out as redundant and my least favorite of the selects from that evenings shooting.

  8. Beautiful! Is that tradesdantsia ‘Sweet Grape’? I just found that someplace, had never seen if before, and now notice it all over. Probably my favorite t. ever. Gorgeous shots. Reminds me I should get out there…maybe I will!.
    Thanks!

Comments are closed.