Maggot Garden Thread

[shera]

Beautiful, huh?

Yes. Really beautiful. This thread is as good as ski porn for me.

I'm finally doing my patio flowers. Annuals up here in the high country are just insane. And my business is booked solid!!! Gardening has actually taken over from skiing for me.

We've gotten rain these past few days, so things are perking up and I'll get out and take pictures of my work from last year really soon. I need to make a website.

In the meantime, I took these photos a couple of weeks ago. So dry.

Austrian Copper Rose


Lupines and German Bearded Irises


This is a rock wall I did last year and I hope it's really blooming now - at picture time it was just Snow in Summer and Irises




I forget the names of all the various daisy shaped flowers


Sedum, again there are so many that I forget the names of all the types


Catmint, Lamb's Ears (just up the slope are daylilies and poppies with buds)


Those pictures were taken under pretty severe drought conditions and I still find them showy and beautiful. Xeric gardens can look so fine...

[Mrs Roo]

Roo and I are garden JONGS, it's true but we are trying to make ammends.

After clearing 6 foot brambles from our small, urban garden last year, we have created some flower beds. We're planning to build a deck which should be interesting considering our suspect carpentry skills .

I'm trying to learn what I can about plants and planting but my biggest thing at the moment is how to plant a bed without making it look to regimented. At the moment I have my geraniums all in a line, my petunias all in a line and a little row of lobelia. It looks odd and I think I've planted them too far apart. I'll try and put stuff in between but any suggestions would be welcome.

[lemon boy]

don't plant in straight lines and randomly alternate your plants :

[lemon boy]

We've had a couple of notable flailures in the garden this year, only about 5 of 36 strawberry plants made it. Our golden razzy plant is on its last leg. One rose is dead and the other is really sad looking and when I pull the fence for the 3rd time to get in a trencher here in a few weeks that'll die too. For whatever reason only a little of my corn has come up and only one cantaloupe plant is going although we have 4 or 5 watermelon plants going. tomtatos are at least on track if slightly behind (our early girl is putting on size but still green), cuces are doing okay. Peppers are looking decent as well plus all our other berry plants (goose, blue, black and redrazz) seem basically healthy with the blackberry canes looking the best (8' tall with tons of berries). One acorn squash plant is doing much better than the other although both are doing good and our sorrel patch is friggin thick. One apple tree has fruit but there's only a couple of apples on the other :shrug:

edit- and with 1.75" for this month alone July is setting up to be the wettest in almost a year at my place.

[Mrs Roo]

don't plant in straight lines and randomly alternate your plants :

Now now LB. Don't be such a smart arse.

When I said I was a garden JONG, I wasn't joking. I didn't realise how weird it would look until after I planted. I'm after some advice for what I can do now. Will I just kill the plants if I dig them up to rearrange them before they are established? Could I just put random clumps of plants in between or would that look odd too? How much distance should I put between them?

[lemon boy]

I am nothing if not a smartass. NOTHING.

I'm not any help on the decorative side of things although I would say that you can dig stuff up as long as it's basically healthy just be gentle and dig up a pretty large area to keep the roots intact. Plants that you don't expect to spread can often be planted quite closely and you can kind of plant little clumps of items together that compliment each other on the verticle as well as those that come to season at different times. I bet if you took a picture of the area you could get Mir to draw up a quick plant plan for you

Also, IMVHO you can mix in some veggie plants that are a bit decorative and/or won't look out of place. Some peas, cuces both vine/climb nicely and peas have pretty flowers. Dunno if it hot enough for you to really grow tomatoes but IMO everyone should have at least one plant b/c they're so good at home.

[shera]

SheRoo, you come from the land of the greatest gardeners and garden writers on the planet. Start out with Hugh Johnson's Principles of Gardening for the basics. Then read anything at all by Vita Sackville-West, Christopher Lloyd, or Gertrude Jekyl for inspiration. And go to any gardens where they'll let you have a look around. If you schmooze your neighbors properly, you'll get free starts of plants that work in your micro-climate.

As for planting in patterns, that can be really fun, like knotted herb gardens or French styled parterres. But you have to plant them thick enough so they won't look like lonely soldiers, at least in double staggered rows. The leaves don't ahve to be touching if you plant out in June, but not more than two inches gap and that'll fill in.

That said, you live in a cool humid climate, so you always have to be considering air circulation, which is not a concern for us here in the American west. We can plant cheek by jowl and get amazing displays.

If you want a more informal, random look, think in terms of paisleys or kidney beans when you plant your groups. Taller in the back obviously. Plant in groups of odd numbers.

Whatever you do, have fun with it. Things will work, things will fail. C'est la vie.

People who garden live longer.

[The AD]

No, you won't kill the plants if you dig them up. The usual advice is to plant in odd number groups. If you buy potted plants just try arranging them before you plant until you get a pleasing arrangement. I've found the spacing requirements they put on the labels put the plants too far apart if you want a nice full look to your flower bed. You can probably cut the number in half and be o.k.

Another recommendation I'll give you is to put in a drip irrigation system. Watering by hand can get tedious even for a small garden and if you go away for a few days you'll return to lots of shriveled plants if the weather's been hot and dry.

[Mrs Roo]

I am nothing if not a smartass. NOTHING.

That's why we love you!

Thanks for the advice, Mir, Monsieur Limon and AD. I was following the instructions on the labels which is why it probably looks so cack. I may have a little rearrange or clump some other plants inbetween. It's very exciting! I know I'm going to have some cock ups but I suppose it's about learning as you go along.

No tomatoes yet, LB, but I have some great lettuce I am growing in a pot. They are going mad so I have have to keep eating bits of them!

[Buzzworthy]

I was thinking about this thread while gazing at our veggy garden we did this year. Looks like I need to take some pics again.

And the wild Rasberries are YUMMY!!!

[The AD]

Tiger Lily in my back yard

[shera]

The rains came and came and came. The high country gardens are at their peak now. I went to the Betty Ford Garden and a couple of big hotels in Vail last week and on the Summit County Garden Tour yesterday and I have so many pictures now. But I'm saving them to build a website this winter.

Here's one, from the Marriot in Vail

[Mrs Roo]

That is gorgeous! Did you put that together?

My flower beds are now much improved. Thanks for the advice. I'm loving this gardening lark. I'm getting such a kick out of the fact that my sunflowers are now taller than Roo, two dried out twisted willows I was given are now lush and resplendant and my morning glory is going nuts ( ) climbing up the trellis.

[shera]

That is gorgeous! Did you put that together?

My flower beds are now much improved. Thanks for the advice. I'm loving this gardening lark. I'm getting such a kick out of the fact that my sunflowers are now taller than Roo, two dried out twisted willows I was given are now lush and resplendant and my morning glory is going nuts ( ) climbing up the trellis.

Wonderful!

No, that's not my work - a colleague's. But that is the classic style of bedding up here and I did the front bed at Neils Lunceford last year in a similar fashion. And I've got some wild stuff going on right now at the Breckenridge Garden Center. The entire month of July, the voles ate every single poppy and petunia bud - stripped them bare. But we started using liquid fence for dogs and cats. Stinky and effective! Finally the color is coming and August will be stunning. So I've done the bedding out at two of the four big nursery operations in the county. Hehe. And I'm working a deal for 500 feet of Main Street in Frisco. I want that so bad - it would make my career.

The bright stuff is fun, although it can make your eyes hurt if you have any training in color schemes. Fortunately I have a new client that wants some discipline so we'll be staying away from the orange and peaches and sticking to pinks at the blue end of the spectrum. Very fine.

And the other day I picked out a huge list of perennials that will be grown for next year. My choices!!! SO exciting.

[cloudpeak]

SheRa, did you put the Marriott garden together? It's lovely!

A few pics from my summer garden:

Astillbes


Cone Flowers


Stargazer Lily


Shasta Daisies

[shera]

SheRa, did you put the Marriott garden together? It's lovely!

No - see prev post. If you guys liked that one, you're gonna love the rest of the pictures. I'm going to make a killer website this winter. Thinking of doing the whole thing on myspace.

Nice pics, cloudpeak.

[lemon boy]

Since this came up the Russian and I ate a frickin ton of wild strawberries yesterday up on the road to grizzly under torreys....and picked some king bolets

[shera]

Since this came up the Russian and I ate a frickin ton of wild strawberries yesterday up on the road to grizzly under torreys....and picked some king bolets

Hush yo mouth! Must not to say where the noble ones are hiding!

It's going off. Here's just one patch from last week. Getting after it again in a couple of days. I'm having visions of elk stew made with these babies during the winter.

[lemon boy]

Bah! right by the road is hardly a "secret stash." That is a pretty sweet little patch. Now that these are something I can easily id, I'm thinking that my hunting trips will be more sucessful I think we're on tap for a thursday night return somewhere.

[snowsprite]

Love that astibille!

We have a sedum that I'm very impressed with...I'll have to post a pic. The reason I'm impressed is I left this sucker in a relatively small pot all winter for 3 years now & it froze solid! I was too lazy to plant it. But it comes back and kicks ass with more vigor each time. I may reward it this year by finally giving it the nice in-ground spot it deserves.

My garden is pretty "eh" this year. I threw in a few impatiens and mulched and called it done. However I engaged in a back-breaking project of digging two 40ft long by 3 foot wide beds. That meant ripping up the grass, putting down that plastic crap, insert annuals, and mulch. It looks pretty good!

You guys are inspiring me though w/ these pics. Maybe next summer I'll go big.

Sprite

[Ripzalot]

i'm diggin my sunflowers that i planted this year.



its cool to watch the birds eatin the seeds too.

[TeleAl]

My 2nd season rose bush.
Pushed a dozen of so of these.