SPRING FLOWERS!--update!

[rainbowgardener]

[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/crocus.jpg[/img]


[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/white_crocus2.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/white_crocus.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/spring_flower_bed3-18.jpg[/img]

So far that I've seen in my yard, crocus, snow drops, winter aconite, siberian iris, and the pansies I just planted today. But daffodils and hyacinth are coming along, will be blooming soon!

[thrr3ee]

They look good! I've never actually planted crocus, oddly enough. I have some tulips in the ground but they haven't even popped up yet, let alone bloomed. I can see some daylilies coming up but that's about it. I'm so excited to start planting though--- except it's freezing cold today.

[Ozark Lady]

It is the first day of spring!
Here is yesterday:

[img]https://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww281/Ozark_Lady/lunapic_126913208077386_1.jpg[/img]

And here is the garden gate today:

[img]https://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww281/Ozark_Lady/000_0053_phixr.jpg[/img]


Oh and the daffodils aren't happy today:
[img]https://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww281/Ozark_Lady/000_0058_phixr.jpg[/img]

Poor Apricot tree, in too big of a hurry:
[img]https://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww281/Ozark_Lady/000_0060_phixr.jpg[/img]

My how quickly spring is gone!

[rainbowgardener]

Well into spring and here's a few more pix:

[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/4024%20Paddock%20garden/4-12_front_yardJPG.jpg[/img]

one of the front flower beds and the lilac tree in front yard

[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/4024%20Paddock%20garden/4-12b-o-g.jpg[/img]

closer up of the same flower bed with basket of gold in full bloom

[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/4024%20Paddock%20garden/4-12_lilac.jpg[/img]

same lilac tree from a different direction with a different flower bed

Incidentally that is my lawn that I never do anything to, don't weed or fertilize or water. Obviously it's all in it's nice spring green now, looking good, later in the summer will be more dried out. But it's full of weeds, but who cares, when mowed it all blends in.

Just wish the camera could capture the perfume of that lilac tree for you! Incredible!

[peachyness]

Rainbow, your front yard is gorgeous!! Your lilac tree looks (and I'm sure smells) so good! I love the setup you have there. Could you share the name of the flowers/plants that are in front of the tree?

[rainbowgardener]

The one covered in brilliant yellow-gold flowers is basket of gold, aurinia saxatilis. I love it, very tough and easy care. It is in both the pictured flower beds. It is smaller in the second one, because that bed is quite a bit shaded by the lilac. Otherwise in the bottom picture there's iris and day lily (two kinds, the regular yellow-orange ones you see all over and a dwarf yellow Stella d''Oro) that haven't bloomed yet, a baby burning bush that volunteered from the neighbor's hedge that I'm still deciding whether to allow to stay there, daffodils that are mostly done.

The purple crocuses that are at the top of this page and some yellow winter aconite were in this bed, but are long gone. Lets see there's some blue-purple grape hyacinth, there's some purple and yellow pansies I buy and stick in just for the early color (you can just get a glimpse of a yellow one in bottom right corner). In that same corner you can just barely see some feathery foliage. That's tansy, that I have to keep pulling to keep it from taking over. Not even visible yet are some jerusalem artichokes, giant tall sunflowers, that I pull out as much as I can get every fall, and what is left in the ground comes back to be plenty of sunflowers the next year. The little blue ones at the bottom are chionodoxa, glory of snow. Not visible are a couple of mums and a new england aster.

It's too early in the AM to go out and check if I managed to name it all. You can see, I stuff the beds full and it is planned to have something in bloom from late Feb into November, mostly all in purples and yellows, a dynamite combination with lots of pop to it.

EDITED later -- I did forget the bed also has black eyed susans and missouri sundrops, not in bloom yet or very visible, mostly just the basal leaves are there right now.

The other flower bed, in the first picture has some of the same plants (eg basket of gold, tulips, iris, daylily) and some different ones including a purple perennial salvia and tradescantia (spider wort) and yarrow instead of tansy (similarly feathery foliage -- some garden designer said that a bed should always have something spiky, feathery, and mound-y for the contrast of textures and shapes). EDIT - and this bed has the b.e. susies and some coreopsis and campanula (bell flower) -- like I said, stuffed full. I do a little trimming and pulling out some extra, but mostly I just let them all battle it out!

The beds are basically right triangles about 8' x 6' but with the hypotenuse a wavy free-form curve (the straight sides are dictated by the lot corners). They are easy care. Weed them out in the spring, lay down mulch, forget about it. Water only if we are in big drought. Trim the dead stuff back in late fall and add more mulch. The only fertilizing it ever gets (other than the mulch breaking down) is when I plant anything in it (like the pansies) I put compost in the planting hole.

That's probably way more than you wanted to know, but it's an example of how lazy gardening works...

PS ... the lilac tree is a wonderful gift. I created the flower beds out of what was lawn. The huge old lilac tree I believe was probably planted when the house was new in the 1920's.

[peachyness]

Rainbow... wow. Thanks for sharing. I also love the yellow and purple combination. Actually, I feel that I stumbled upon that too. I bought yellow and purple daylillies.

I will have to research the other plants and see if I could plant them in my garden.

ETA: I forgot to mention, thank you for sharing what one gardener shared, that a garden should have a mixture of textures. I think that is what I've been stressing out about. I haven't planted my daylillies because I felt like I need something. It's more texture, I suppose. Oh, and I like the idea of lazy gardening. I mean, I will put in as much work as possible, but to an extent. I like to allow mother nature to do some work to.

[rainbowgardener]

And don't think your flower beds are going to look like that the first year you plant them. This is like their 7th or 8th season. The first couple years they were a bit pathetic, with a lot of bare dirt around some plants. But you have to allow some room for things to grow and fill in. So the first few years I kept adding plants. Now I mostly subtract as things keep multiplying (sounds like a math lesson!, surely I can work dividing the plants into that sentence ).

But letting it get a bit crowded like that suppresses weeds, so I have very little weeding to do in those beds. And I don't go through as many wheelbarrows full of mulch, because there's not as much room to put it.

[peachyness]

Rainbow, I made it a point to tell my husband that it took you about 8 years to get your garden to look like this. He has this fantasy that when I am done, it will look perfect.

[rainbowgardener]

Glad you both got that! Took me 8 years to get the flowerbeds so lush and full... took nature about 90 years for the gigantic lilac tree...

[Sage Hermit]

OMG

[rainbowgardener]

[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/4024%20Paddock%20garden/5-5salvia2.jpg[/img]

May Night salvia-- with delicata squash in front of it! It volunteered there last year and I liked it so much, I planted it there this time, right in the middle of a front yard flower bed!

[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/4024%20Paddock%20garden/5-5salvia.jpg[/img]

the same salvia with the iris... this was a few days ago, since then way more of the iris are blooming, including some of the huge almost black/purple ones.

[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/4024%20Paddock%20garden/5-5hstv.jpg[/img]

honeysuckle trumpet vine, a little past its peak already

[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/4024%20Paddock%20garden/5-5white-iris.jpg[/img]

backyard iris... since the iris keep multiplying, almost every flowerbed has some now

One of the things that keeps me so hooked on gardening is how it changes day by day. Many of the pictures in this thread are the same front flower beds. At the very top, there were crocuses and little bits of green and lots of dirt. Then there was the brilliant aurinia and the tulips. The last pictures have the salvia and iris. In just a few days since those last pictures the aurinia blossoms are all gone but there's way more iris and more spiderwort. From one day to the next, the garden is never the same!

[applestar]

Everything looks beautiful! I didn't know those perennial salvias bloom at this time of the year! I started Salvia azurea (Pitcher Sage) -- as well as annuals Salvia coccinea 'Forest Fire' and 'Lady in Red' and Salvia Blue Angel/Gentian Sage -- from seeds this year but that one is summer blooming. I guess I'll have to try growing May Night next year.

[rainbowgardener]

Yes, I love it. It is covered in blooms now. It won't be as covered after this, but if you keep it dead headed, it will keep blooming straight through til fall frost. It and the honeysuckle trumpet vine are my longest bloomers.

[rainbowgardener]

Here's that front flower bed now that the dark purple iris have bloomed... draws wows from passers by:

[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/4024%20Paddock%20garden/5-10salviairis2.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/4024%20Paddock%20garden/5-10iris2.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/4024%20Paddock%20garden/5-10iris.jpg[/img]

dwarf azaleas are blooming now, too:

[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/4024%20Paddock%20garden/5-10azalea.jpg[/img]

don't you just LOVE spring!??

[rainbowgardener]

But the bed with the iris and salvia, is almost all purple now... It's supposed to be purple and yellow, but keeping that going all season is a little challenge... Later there will be black eyed susan, coreopsis, daylily. But I need to find something yellow to bloom in this transition season. I'm looking at a yellow peony flowered tulip. The peony flowered tulips bloom later than the regular ones, so maybe it would hit now. Otherwise, there's a few little dwarf marigolds at the edge, but maybe I could just put some tall marigolds in.

Any other thoughts?

[applestar]

Try a yellow flowering False Indigo. My Baptista 'Solar Flare' is just starting to bloom so it's in the lemon yellow phase. It's a nitrogen fixer too.

I have a similar color combo going with 'Solar Flare' and a Blue False Indigo, along with two kinds of Amsonia, to be followed by 3 kinds of lavender and Lyre-leaf sage and Opuntia cactus. After that, the color scheme falls apart with Asclepias tuberosa and a magenta/pink flowering yarrow (it was supposed to be red).

[rainbowgardener]

Here's the same dwarf azalea with more of the buds open:

[img]https://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt102/rainbowgardener/4024%20Paddock%20garden/azalea5-15.jpg[/img]

Last year these azaleas barely bloomed, this year they are so covered, you can't see the shrub...

[Ozark Lady]

Hey, can anyone else smell the pictures?

I can actually smell the photos... newest thing in computers... webcam, and microphone move over, we have smells! ha ha

Really, look at the flowers and wait a minute, you can smell them!

I am not sleepy, I am not intoxicated! They just are so well photographed.

[Green Mantis]

Did you know you can eat the tubers of JERUSALUM ARTICHOKES, like potatoes. Apparently they are very good for people with diabeties. Plus you can sell them, they are hard to find. At least here in Alberta, Canada, because all the fancy resturants buy the tubers from the growers.---I just finished having an order of the tubers shipped to me ( well about a month ago). Not cheap either! You should try selling or giving them away.

[Green Mantis]

Your garden is incredibly beautiful by the way. Lots of love there!