The Rock Garden

As I said before, I started early this year, I could not wait to get out there.  I am not a skilled gardener, but I'm learning. I love flowers, I love seeing them sprout and become fuller year to year.  I remember my parents garden's past, and my Yiayia's little garden, all so beautiful to look at, the softness of the geranium petals and the air around us filled with sweetness. I love the memories flowers bring back.

                                                                                                         

These offer a little taste of the flower gardens of my childhood, my parent's back and front gardens from many years ago, these pictures do not do them justice and certainly do not show you the roses!

I had a little space in the front of our last home, which was filled with what I feel are necessities to any flower garden.  They are daisies, black-eyed susans and lavender.  In this home, I have a lot of garden. I mean A LOT garden. Front beds, side beds, veggie garden, beds around the house, our flower rock garden which we enlarged in the fall and the dreaded wooded area. The front beds are pretty standard with mainly bushes, boxwoods, lily of the valley, a lavender I transplanted from our last two homes (it has always moved with us) and a beautiful japanese maple. There is also a barrel of chamomile with dahlia bulbs. The sides have lillies and forsynthia.
The veggie garden finally went in last week, could I be any later?

Virginia Spiderwort

There are hostas around the house and they are all doing well, I split some of it last year to fill out the border.  Meanwhile the pokeweed in the dreaded woods is out of control, already. I actually like the woods, but would like to add some trilliums and bleeding hearts out there, and get rid of the pokeweed! Early in the spring, I transplanted some of the lily-of-the-valley and the spiderwort to the wood edge for next year. Maybe I can force it out.

This year though, my focus-my energy-my dreams really have been on the rock garden.  It's been raining so much there has been little time to get out there and what I do have is either thriving, drowning or suffocating as the soil is still being worked with peat and compost and additional soil, as it is so heavy in clay.  Not glamourous work this year. Not much to look at this year either, it will be truly beautiful next year and the years to follow, I hope.

What it had in it when I acquired the garden was lillies, white iris, spiderwort (a weed or an herb, I'm not sure which, but it's pretty), chives and lots of weeds.

That's it.

Here is the garden earlier in the spring, iris still in bloom.

I have since added more lillies, salvia, hosta, pincushions, daisies, black-eyed susans, lemonbalm, bellflower, hot pokers, lavender, oregano, spearmint, tulips, allium, poppies, and hollyhocks. I received a beautiful beebalm from a friend and admire her garden, but it did not fare well and I don't think it made it? I'm still looking to make sure, trying to recognize it. We'll have to see?

I also added some annuals such as impatients and potted pansies, and of course basil,  all are part of the plan. You can see before we enlarged the garden the oregano and salvia were at the one end. It is essentially almost tripled in size, it has a bit of kidney shape angling upwards to the right.

The plan still needs vertical rocks to help stop runoff as the garden is on a slope and which will add more visual interest. I'd like to add small stones and creeping thyme or "ooh ooh" maybe some wooly thyme, and hensnchicks for more texture. I added Lambs Ear and am waiting for it to grow more and can't wait for it to be big enough to split and be able to repeat some patterns in the garden. Hoping to find the Bee balm and add some Russian Sage in the future.  

What do you think, is there anything I am missing? What are your favorites? Does anyone know what Spiderwort is? Would love to hear from you and your green thumbs.

So when you wonder where I am, I am either in the garden or dreaming about it wistfully, while in the midst of many other activities.

This will be a new feature for How Does your Garden Grow Mondays, for the summer. I will feature how my garden adventure is going and others also.

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