GardenBook

 Joining along today with our friend Alison over at Bonney Lassie   who, suffering from Garden Perfection Fatigue, decided to air her dirty laundry so to speak, and encourage other garden bloggers  to share their unkempt spaces . It's satisfying to know that you aren't the only one with pockets of crappiness in the garden.   Thus I will expose the world to the impending demise of Lady Banks (Rosa banksiae 'Lutea') which I foolishly installed many years ago to grow along a patio cover. As you can see here, the patio cover is in the process of succumbing to dry rot and I have slowly been removing it. The beam on the left was once a horizontal support for 2x4's which were attached to the west wall of my house, and here Lady Banks thrived (too well) for many years. Around the time the patio structure started falling apart , Lady Banks added bird habitat to her other qualities.  I love the birds that hang out in my garden , but I highly recommend discouraging a bi...

 I will sheepishly admit that I don't remember what year my family and I moved into this house, but I'll guess it has been close to  25 years since we migrated here from the house next door. The island bed in my back garden was a lawn and the neighbors behind me to the west had a solid row of trees along the fence -birch, Japanese maples and 2 miserable Leylandi cypress, along with the damn Ash tree which still lives on. There was a lot of shade. Birch, cypress and maples are all long gone, and as of this spring so is my 30+ year old Liquidambar. I can't tell you what a thrill it was to get rid of that hellacious tree. It brought glorious sun into areas of my garden that had been subject to chronic flopping and stretching for years -much to the irritation of this gardener.    I started digging out lawn for what I now call the Island Bed just a few years after we moved in, once my children had moved on from grass-romping, and  have been slowly expanding it ever ...

 Back in August of 2014 I posted about the Hateful Areas in my garden . You would think after three intervening years that I would have dealt with most if not all of these eyesores , however it was only this summer that I began to tackle 3 of them in earnest. Today we'll take look at what I now refer to as my Tiny Succulent Garden -an upgrade from hateful I think.   Here is the space as it looked in 2014. This small bed is directly outside the back slider into the garden, and it rarely looked good. Complicating the issue is the exposure, which is shade all morning and strong hot western sun in the afternoon. Because of the sun angle and the brief period of direct sun anything I planted here either flopped or burnt up.  I decided to plant it with winter hardy succulents . Most of my succulents are grown in containers, and there were a few that were begging to be liberated. Last fall I dug up everything in this bed and either moved it or put it in the yard waste ....

 Way back in March (you know, when it was Spring !) I posted about my renovation of the sadly neglected northwest corner of my garden. Though the transformation is not complete it looks improved and the plants are starting to fill in.  Here it is in April, after the new plants were installed. Looking pretty sparse... Lobelia tupa is somewhat discernible in the center of the photo next to the soaker hose , and the trellis is the new home for Passiflora loefgrenii caerulea.  And taken last week, the Passiflora has made a statement..I'm keeping an eye on it. Lobelia tupa has achieved knee-high status. A couple moves still to be made here over fall and winter; Sanquisorba officinalis 'Red Thunder'(out of the photo) is too close to the Weigela and was shaded in summer. It will go where the Penstemon 'Raven' lives on the lower right, and the Penstemon will be moved to the left.  This infrastructure issue is unfortunately calling the shots in the bed...

 Although I failed to take a 'before' photo of this northwest corner of my garden be assured it is not verbal embellishment to say it was wall to wall weeds a month ago, with a few ill placed and either under or overgrown plants that were ready to be discarded.This entire area was also a victim of the collapsed fence incident last year, and the subsequent working guy trampling that resulted.  I dug out an artichoke , a Phygelius 'Devils Tears' and a noid Agastache that flopped miserably until it was finally engulfed by it's neighbor Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue' . 'Black and Blue' was spared , the green patch behind the shovel. This Salvia has thick tuberous roots and will spread vigorously if not dealt with firmly in spring, and kept an eye on all summer. I put up with this because I love the plant in spite of it's wanderlust. It seems quite indifferent to heat, drought and is popular with the hummers and beneficials. . The Corsican Hel...

 Oh you hateful areas, how you smirk at my despair, knowing that I am galvanized into inertia  in the face of what a transformation from dreadful to pleasing entails. When touring gardens (and there have been many this summer) I habitually look for the hateful areas of others-surely they are acceptable in my own garden if open gardens have them ? Of course they are never seen, because those who open gardens have a plan that hides, or fixes the more godforsaken regions of their plot- It's the outdoor equivalent of putting up a decorative  folding screen to hide the litter box... pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.  Here are mine...confession is the first step towards rehabilitation.  The RV parking parking space, which does not have, nor will it ever have an RV. Look at all the concrete ! I will say that a few months ago ago this looked much worse, featuring a falling over fence and many piles of discarded lumber and...

 I've done a fair amount of 'rose editing' in 2013 . I embarked upon this particular journey a couple of years ago when it became clear to me that  my garden was not going to get any bigger, and 60+ roses were using up valuable real estate. Many of the roses that have since been sent to the compost facility were either in decline, duplicates or under performers. I had gone from buying one or two roses a year , to buying none; there was simply no place to put them. As of today I have slimmed down my assortment to around 35, a couple of which have questionable status going forward. One of my keepers is the David Austin rose , Lady Emma Hamilton. I bought her the first year she was introduced to US commerce, and she has proved to be a prolific bloomer, very disease resistant (no sprays are used in my garden ) and has a nice shrub-like appearance never displaying the awkwardness that some of the modern roses are prone to.  I admit that I have tendency to plant things too clo...