Other Flowers you like

[WaterWitchin]

Originally Posted by Dollythehun

I like the extra ambience the horse trailer provides.

Too bad you can't see clearly the 15' camping trailer or the two horse trailer, or the manure pile. It completes and defines the area.

[Dollythehun]

Hardscaping.

[estación seca]

If you get on the local TV gardening show you can talk people into buying the horse manure for their gardens.

[Leafmite]

Neat flowers. I really enjoy seeing all the different plants everyone is posting. I cannot grow everything so this is absolutely the next best thing!

[JScott]

Originally Posted by DirtyCoconuts

this is a sorrel (Jamaican hibiscus) so damn beautiful

Schom schom schom by J Solo, on Flickr

That looks a lot like my favorite hibiscus, Fiesta. The coloration is very similar.

I love Japanese maple. I have planted one at every house I've ever lived in, including the house I bought last year. It is looking great. I didn't think I really loved coleus that much, but I planted some around the maple just to give it a little color and texture around the trunk of the tree, and it has turned out to be just amazing. I LOVE it. In the picture you can see the Japanese maple toward the back, and the crazy huge coleus in front of it. I had no idea that coleus would get that big. That's just three plants, and they were in 4 inch pots, and they were maybe 6 inches tall when I planted them. You can also see some zinnias and periwinkles in the foreground there. That corner of that flower bed is kind of a weird space, and I had a hard time figuring out what to put there, but it turned out to be the nicest part of my flower beds. It looks great. There's also some Angelonia and a Tropicana rose bush in the mix there too. I'm very pleased with that little corner.

As far as other stuff I love, I've already ordered quite a few things that will ship in the fall at their proper planting time. I got some digitalis (foxgloves), some lupines (it may be two hot for them here, but I thought I'd give it a shot. Maybe if I plant them in fall, they'll bloom before the summer gets too hot), various kinds of lilies, and of course a ton of tulips and other spring flowering bulbs. There's a gardenia kind of behind the maple that you can't see very well. I don't know if it gets enough sun there, and I don't know if it will be perennial here. It is rated to zone 8, and I'm in zone 8, but I'm still skeptical. I associate gardenia with warmer climates, like in California and such. It isn't growing very fast, but it is starting to get some flower buds on it, so maybe it is getting enough light.

Breck's has some really fantastic daylilies on their website right now, so I ordered some of those, along with some asiatic lilies and some tree lilites. The lilies I planted this year did way better than I could have hoped for, so I decided I needed more lol. I also ordered some Japanese irises. They are amazing, but they like to stay kind of wet. I'm not sure that I have a place in the garden that stays wet enough, unless it's in that back corner, so I thought I"d give it a try.

I've placed orders for several more roses. I love tea roses. Right now, I have Desert Peace, Midas Touch, Always and Forever, Tropicana, and Dark Night. I plan to order a few more later this summer to be planted in the fall. Spring is a good time to plant new roses, but I think the fall is better. It gives them time to get established over the winter, and I get a good flush of blooms from them the first spring, whereas if you plant in early spring. the first year's blooms are not that impressives, and you have to wait until the second year to get some really good blooms.

In the second picture, you can see my giant sunflowers that I just kind of planted there on a whim. I had some seeds, and didn't really know where I wanted to plant them, so I just stuck a few here and there.

But anyway, that's what I've got going on in my favorite little corner of my garden right now.

[WaterWitchin]

Pinch back your coleus if it starts to overpower the setting. They can be pinched WAY back if you want, and will get even bushier. Definitely pinch out flower stalks. Think of pruning them as one prunes chrysanthemum.

I've tried foxglove and lupine several times. They don't survive a second year... just too hot here. Let me know how it goes.

The Japanese iris... grow them in a pot or saucer with one or no holes. I grow them in an originally no-hole pot with a few 1/4" drilled holes in bottom, in my pond. They like really wet. I pull them in winter, as they don't like wet feet once we hit freezing temps.

Japanese maples. I'm addicted. Pretty sure I have at least seven or eight hanging around here. And the spring colors.... just amazing. I'll try to take some pictures. I had a bunch from this spring I'd taken, but pretty sure I've deleted them.

Daylilies and lilies (Asiatic, Oriental, Ornipet)... ahem, I am also addicted to them. I'll take some pictures... gonna divide this fall, and I think Jeff's name might wanna be on a couple of the colors I'm dividing.

Did you get any hydrangea yet? I loooove hydrangeas. Your space is looking lovely. Let me help you come up with more ideas, get rid of some more of that nasty lawn grass, and plant more flowers instead. Who wants to mow?

Ahem... I'm looking back through this before posting. It appears I have an addictive personality.

[SouthPark]

We certainly can't leave out the trusty bird of paradise!

Just to demonstrate how much sharpness and clarity is actually lost due the OrchidBoard software compressing our already tiny 1024x768 size images to smaller filesize ....... I've included image links to google-drive. Notice the significant difference in clarity - for the same pixel size!

Pic1
Pic2
Pic3
Pic4

[DirtyCoconuts]

Nice!

I DO so love that flower

Toxic to dogs so, heads up.


Nice pic too

The full size ones

[JScott]

Originally Posted by WaterWitchin

Pinch back your coleus if it starts to overpower the setting. They can be pinched WAY back if you want, and will get even bushier. Definitely pinch out flower stalks. Think of pruning them as one prunes chrysanthemum.

I've tried foxglove and lupine several times. They don't survive a second year... just too hot here. Let me know how it goes.

The Japanese iris... grow them in a pot or saucer with one or no holes. I grow them in an originally no-hole pot with a few 1/4" drilled holes in bottom, in my pond. They like really wet. I pull them in winter, as they don't like wet feet once we hit freezing temps.

Japanese maples. I'm addicted. Pretty sure I have at least seven or eight hanging around here. And the spring colors.... just amazing. I'll try to take some pictures. I had a bunch from this spring I'd taken, but pretty sure I've deleted them.

Daylilies and lilies (Asiatic, Oriental, Ornipet)... ahem, I am also addicted to them. I'll take some pictures... gonna divide this fall, and I think Jeff's name might wanna be on a couple of the colors I'm dividing.

Did you get any hydrangea yet? I loooove hydrangeas. Your space is looking lovely. Let me help you come up with more ideas, get rid of some more of that nasty lawn grass, and plant more flowers instead. Who wants to mow?

Ahem... I'm looking back through this before posting. It appears I have an addictive personality.

I would not say no to some daylily or lily divisions. And yes, I need to prune the coleus back pretty hard. It is overgrowing some of the other things I have planted there. It is on my to do list, just haven't gotten around to it yet. I like the flower spikes on the coleus, but I know I need to prune them to encourage more foliage growth. But I leave them just for a bit so I can enjoy them a little.

I did not get the Hydrangea yet. I have the perfect spot picked out, but I didn't see one that I liked this year, so I'm gonna wait for spring, or maybe order one online. You can usually find a better selection online.

My foxglove and lupines always just last one year here too. I just love them, and I grow them as annuals. It's not that big of a deal. I order them bare root in the fall and plant them then, and I get some good blooms from them before it gets too hot, but they never survive a second year, but that's okay. I'll just plant more again in the fall.

The Japanese iris is going to be an experiment. I planted a few this year, but I didn't realize how wet they needed to be, so they didn't do very well. I'm still trying to work out a method that will allow them to grow. Maybe like you said, plant them in pots without holes, or with holes just a few inches from the bottom, and sink the pots in the ground. I have a corner of the garden that stays pretty moist, but I don't know if that will be wet enough for them. I'm experimenting and trying to figure it out because I love them so much. I'll let you know if I find something that works.

If it were up to me, I would have no lawn. It would all be gardens, but I'm not the only one who lives here, so I don't have complete autonomy to do whatever I want. I would really like to take out the strip of grass between the narrow flower bed and the walkway to the front door and turn that into a flower bed. That's a battle I might win eventually if I am persistent enough.

As I said before, this is my first spring in this house, and the landscaping was a disaster, so it's going to take me a few years to get it back in shape. I can't expect to get it all done in one year. Maybe expanding the narrow flower bed along the side of the house all the way to the walkway to the front door will be next year's project.

I also always plant a small patch of papaver somniferum. Danish Flag is one of my favorites. They're so lovely and I just adore them. I know that's a gray area plant, but if I just have a few, and I'm not scratching the pods to extract the opium, I don't think anybody is going to bother me, or at least they haven't yet. Very few people would even know what they were if they say them.

I may also have an addiction problem. I think I probably have 6 or 700 dollars worth of pending orders at Breck's that will be shipped in the fall at the proper planting time. And I'm expecting another from SVO soon, and I bought a few Adenium obesum seedlings from Kim at Fair Orchids which should be here early next week. I may have a problem. I may have a serious problem.

[SouthPark]

Originally Posted by DirtyCoconuts

Nice!
Toxic to dogs so, heads up.

Wow!!!!!! Didn't know about that! Thanks for the heads-up and will keep those well away from and out of reach of dogs.