Annuals
The top three pictures are not of my garden. Sure, I'd like a garden like that and I'd definitely like whimsical "flowerbeds" like these. I have had formal gardens in the past but they take a lot of time and back-breaking work.
When I first started gardening at the age of nine it was because we needed cut flowers for my mother's florist business. I grew a lot of zinnias which are almost as dramatic as dahlias but not as fussy. (Zinnias, being annuals, are less rewarding than dahlias which are tubers and keep coming back every year.) But my all-time favorite annual is the sweetpea. The next four pics are of zinnias and sweetpeas.
Apart from the roses and fuschias in my "sissy patch" in front of the house, my current garden is a "wild" garden. By that I mean it is too big to have dainty little flowerbeds and I don't have the time to fuss with delicate plants and weed and water them all the time. I grow mostly South African lilies and native Oregon shrubs like rhododendrons which tolerate our summer drought and don't need to be watered ever and I plant them on the edge of the meadow where it meets the forest.
The only annuals that I grow are native Oregon wild-flowers. I'll just scatter a packet of wild-flower seeds in spring and see what pops up. Fortunately my favorite natives like clarkia (named after Clark of Lewis and Clark and commonly known as godetia) and escholtzia (commonly known as California poppy but which grows all up and down the West Coast) keep reseeding themselves because they are so tough. (California poppy has now been declared a noxious weed in Australia.) The next five pics are of clarkia and escholtzia and some mixed wild-flowers.
The last pic is the way my "garden" looks right now after the summer drought has killed the grass and the South African lilies have all bloomed and died back and the only "flowers" left are the dandelions sprouting up from the dead brown grass in the meadow.
When I first started gardening at the age of nine it was because we needed cut flowers for my mother's florist business. I grew a lot of zinnias which are almost as dramatic as dahlias but not as fussy. (Zinnias, being annuals, are less rewarding than dahlias which are tubers and keep coming back every year.) But my all-time favorite annual is the sweetpea. The next four pics are of zinnias and sweetpeas.
Apart from the roses and fuschias in my "sissy patch" in front of the house, my current garden is a "wild" garden. By that I mean it is too big to have dainty little flowerbeds and I don't have the time to fuss with delicate plants and weed and water them all the time. I grow mostly South African lilies and native Oregon shrubs like rhododendrons which tolerate our summer drought and don't need to be watered ever and I plant them on the edge of the meadow where it meets the forest.
The only annuals that I grow are native Oregon wild-flowers. I'll just scatter a packet of wild-flower seeds in spring and see what pops up. Fortunately my favorite natives like clarkia (named after Clark of Lewis and Clark and commonly known as godetia) and escholtzia (commonly known as California poppy but which grows all up and down the West Coast) keep reseeding themselves because they are so tough. (California poppy has now been declared a noxious weed in Australia.) The next five pics are of clarkia and escholtzia and some mixed wild-flowers.
The last pic is the way my "garden" looks right now after the summer drought has killed the grass and the South African lilies have all bloomed and died back and the only "flowers" left are the dandelions sprouting up from the dead brown grass in the meadow.
posted by Joubert at 10:26 AM
The Alliance
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