Start A Butterfly Garden! (page 12)

Xanthippe

Finally the photo loaded. Not my garden or my Bougainvillea but lovely nonetheless. The arboretum at Trsteno, Dubrovnik. Do you visit gardens when you travel?

GrreatTeacher

Well, it finally stopped raining, but then it was unseasonably cold. It finally warmed up this week, and I got my flowers!

I usually buy garden packs of small annuals and plant my own, a different color scheme every year.

This year it was so late that I bought preplanted flowers; 5 window box planters of miniature petunias that I just popped into the window boxes. Each one has fuschia, yellow and red/ orange blooms and they are already spilling over the edges!

Then I bought 3 planters of bright red geraniums that are full grown and I just lined my front deck with them. So, you walk in behind the geraniums but in front of my petunia flowerboxes to get to the front door. I love sitting out on that front deck. I feel totally pampered to have fully grown flowers in May. Unfortunately, I paid a lot more than I normally do. Maybe next year I'll have to go back to the cheap way.

My hydrangeas are in large containers in my back yard, but they are not doing so well. They started to bloom in the early spring, but then it turned cold again and they shriveled up. Now they are leafy green, but are not growing very vigorously. No signs of blooming yet. I may have to plant them in the ground. I wasn't sure where I wanted them, so I planted them in containers last year and they did well. It might be time to make up my mind about where to plant them.

Thanks for the pictures, Xanthippe. I love gardens. I planted them with my grandmother when I was young and I have the best memories surrounding flowers.

Best of luck with your gardening, everyone.

Xanthippe

Thanks GreatTeacher. I love flowers too, particularly growing them from seed. So magical watching seedlings pop up then later flower. My hydrangeas are really slow too but the Viburnums I bought in March are flowering, so exciting. Will try and post pictures but I find it it very slow posting photos on here from my iPad. Sometimes I leave it going round and round but come back hours later and it's posted.

Edit - worked ok this time!

Xanthippe

LisaRose

maginative fence decoration Lisa Rose! In which part of the world do you live to be able to grow succulents? Do they stay out all year round? I see you have an agave and echeverias also a lovely acanthus in the ground. Any aeoniums? One of my favourite succulents is theHottentot fig Carpobrotus edulis but like most succulents it's not hardy in the UK except in the Scilly Isles, on the beaches in the far south west.

Thank you. I have space at an antique mall, so I was able to use some of my own inventory. I live in the San Francisco bay area of California, we are blessed with a very mild climate, you can grow just about everything, so yes you can leave them out all year. I have gardened in the hot and dry California inland and also the cold and dry Colorado flatlands at 6,500 foot elevation, this is so much easier, it's a joy to garden. No aeoniums that I know of, but I don't always know the names of things. I think you can grow succulents anywhere, but if you are in a colder climate it does limit which ones. I grew hens and chicks in Colorado (don't know the Latin name). In fact I brought a pot of them back with me and it survived the journey even though it was in storage for six months with no light or water. It's one tough plant. A friend gave me a cutting of one, no root. I stuck it in a pot and by six months it was huge.

The acanthus was my husband's pick. I am not fond of it. It's beautiful but It's supposed to be drought tolerant, but I find it gets limp in the hotter months even with supplemental water. I just don't have time to baby things!

Bonsai

Lovely pics everyone! So cool to see so many different gardening styles around the world! Since my second daughter was born recently I haven't been able to visit JWN much, but please keep the pics coming! The elders have been snooping around my neighborhood quite frequently, so I've kind of been spooked from posting recent pics of my gardening escapades. Hopefully things will quiet down soon.

Xanthippe

Congratulation on the new baby Bonsai!

The yellow flags in the pond are starting to flower. As you can see I desperately need to get a new shed this year. I've started to empty it and I found a squirrel got in there in the winter and there was a pile of hazel nuts off my tree each with teeth marks and a hole in it!

Start A Butterfly Garden!

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