Flower Arrangement Challenge, June

This one is pretty special, thanks to a combination of Rudbeckia, Echinacea, and for those saavy gardeners or foodies out there, yes, the greenery is parsley. I had to get creative.

Maintaining Balance in the Garden

Whenever someone hears for the first time that I'm a gardener, I almost invariably get asked, "Do you grow vegetables or flowers?" My answer is "yes." Why must it be an either/or proposition? Sometimes, though, the demands of one type of gardening begin to push the other type to the margins.

Nearly everything is putting on dramatic growth in the vegetable garden, which feels a bit like a child demanding attention. "Look at me!" it shouts. The beans are racing over the arches I built for them. The corn is now over my head. When something isn't growing like one of Jack's magical beans, then it's signaling me to lift it. I harvested 64 heads of garlic the other day. I've been communing with vegetables quite a lot lately.

The first substantial harvest

Even though the veg patch is being so rowdy and making me feel like it's patting me on the back a bit, much work still needs to be done in the ornamental areas. They are putting on a little show of their own, but it's a more subdued show, so sometimes they don't get as much attention. Someday I hope that "exuberant" will be an appropriate means of describing my flower beds, but right now, I do love the relative peace they represent. 

'Becky' has arrived!

The much-anticipated first blooms from the Leucanthemum superbum 'Becky' (yep, a daisy with my name) have finally arrived, and now I'm greedy for more. I hope they spread like weeds all over the large border. The Crocosmia 'Lucifer' bulbs that I lifted and brought with me from Orlando are multiplying and filling another bed with their scintillating blooms.

Fiery Crocosmia 'Lucifer'

In the front borders another Orlando transplant, the Canna, is stretching out and getting comfortable in a mix of Rudbeckia and Echinacea. When I compare my borders with photos of my favorite English garden (Great Dixter), I feel mine are so sparse. I think the word they would use is "mingy." I'm tempted to run out and buy a whole bunch of plants to fill in all the gaps, but I must stay my hand (and my wallet) and remind myself that things will look a lot different in a few years. It just requires a little patience and maybe a little balance.

The front beds are slowly filling in

Building a Garden Fence, Part III - The Big Reveal

When I worked for a large restaurant corporation, one of my colleagues had said that he really wanted to grow vegetables at home, but his wife rejected the idea because she believed vegetable gardens were ugly. I was a little shocked, even a bit wounded by such a remark. I tried to assure him that they could be beautiful spaces and even emailed him photos of my Orlando garden to illustrate the point. His wife was unmoved. That has been in my mind ever since, and it has informed the way I think about vegetable gardens.

This garden has long been a dream of mine. I have imagined it for years. I've sketched out plans for it in my graph paper notebook. When we moved to this house, I saw that the garden could become a reality. There have been many preparations made for this space, lots of measuring, plan revising, plowing, building, and so on. Now that it is basically finished, I must admit that I have shed quite a few tears lately. It is one thing to dream about something. It is quite another to actually see it take physical shape. After working on the center fountain and surrounding plantings one morning, I walked into the house with tears in my eyes. My stepson noticed and asked what was wrong. "Oh, nothing," I replied. "It's just so beautiful up there, and I sometimes I can't believe it's actually looking better than I had imagined." I suspect he just added that to the file of "Weird Things Becky Says." Strange or not, as each element has come to completion, I have found myself weeping happily.

And so, what follows is a series of photos that will hopefully capture the joy that we have built here.

After seeing a blue door in a garden featured in Gardens Illustrated, I've always wanted one for my own garden, so that's what I painted all three doors after I built them.

The front door welcomes guests

We have done all the labor ourselves. We set the posts, built all of the sections between the posts, and stretched and attached the chicken wire to the lower portions. Our fingers are sore.

The view from the orchard

The back center does have a glaring gap in the fence. That's where my eventual greenhouse will go.

The view from above

View from the barn side

My mom insisted that I should have a place to sit down in the garden, which gave us another good reason to visit the antique shops. We found this chair in the perfect color of blue.

A place to rest for a moment

The hoops are made from bending electrical conduit. I've stretched bird netting over them and attached the netting with zip ties. The beans love scrambling over them. 

Beans climbing up their arches

The welcome sign on the front door and this beautiful green man were made by MyGardenGoddess and can be found on Etsy. They really are perfect and quite detailed.

Our watchman

It's hard to remember now what the space looked like before, so here's a little reminder.

Before

And a very satisfying after

When night falls, we can see the lights up in the garden casting a soft glow. They are made from Ball jars with dismantled solar lights placed in the mouths. They're attached to the posts with plumbing straps, and they give the garden a nice finish.

Daylilies and Diversions

Turfman and I have no recollection of these plants existing when we moved into the house last year.

A profusion of blooms

Given how full they are, we wonder what was wrong with us then. We must have maintained a razor-sharp focus on unpacking boxes. I am more inclined to believe that there were, for whatever reason, no flowers in this part of the pool area last year. I'm watching them carefully as our first anniversary at the new house approaches. Perhaps they will all inexplicably disappear.

They will certainly need to be divided later. I can't count exactly how many potentially new plants are packed in together, but it's at least 40. As I walk the grounds each morning, I consider where I could relocate the divisions. They should make a sizable contribution to some of the areas requiring a little filling in. Free plants always make me a little giddy.

The daylilies I dug up and transported from Florida are doing quite nicely now, too. Many of them had not yet bloomed for me before we made the move, so I am seeing them for the first time. This one is especially impressive with its strong coral color.

An escapee from Florida

There are other daylily surprises from the previous owners, and we've been enjoying our new inheritance. They certainly add a lot to the garden.

Of course, all this talk of daylilies is more of a diversionary tactic. People have been asking about the vegetable garden and its progress. I've been avoiding showing it in any more unfinished states. Since I have a problem with patience, of course I think the progress has been ridiculously slow. But it has been progressing. I just need to finish building the last door and putting in one cross beam, and then I'll be ready to show it to everyone. That post will come within the week.