Home Gardens too!

Even though we are both busy with our respective businesses, we've found the time (or rather Steve has taken the time - usually late at night) to start putting in gardens for ourselves around the house.  This is a work in progress, and will take a few seasons to complete.  But anyway, here are more pictures!



This is one of the gardens at the front of the house.  We moved the spirea to the side of the stairs, planted tulips, crocuses and hyacinths and it was so nice to see them coming up.  However, at the time this picture was taken, they were past and the summer flowers were starting to come into bloom.  The flower buds on the spirea were coming along nicely, and the lamium was too.












This is the area along the lane.  Eventually it will be all flowers, but we're putting it in in stages.  This is stage two.








There are two lavender plants and a purple liatris at the back, and 5 daylily plants.  We'll add more once we decide what else we want to put in there.  This is a full sun area so whatever goes in there will have to be able to tolerate all that sun.






Here is the start of the herb garden.  The herbs are pretty small right now, but they'll grow.









And more dianthus.  Maybe next year I can find some carnations, though these smell pretty good too.











I call this the strawberry garden.  It has sage and thyme and rhubarb, but it also has about 5 strawberry plants - some left from last year.  We actually got a couple of strawberries, but the slugs and snails got the rest.
And yes, that is a dragon guarding the garden.  :-D



The front of the house, showing both gardens and the potentilla plants out front.  The flowers are a nice cheerful yellow.









And here we are ready for Canada Day!  The hanging baskets have red and white flowers so are very appropriate, and the flag flies all spring, summer and autumn.

Here we have grapevines by the back door.  Until we know exactly where we want them, this is where we put them.  We expect to put them in the garden centre area, probably along a low fence or trellis.  Or maybe even use them as shade for plants needing more shade than is available.  This photo was taken on June 30th, and they had just been repotted from the containers I purchased them in in mid May.

Here is the white grapevine as it was this evening (July 27th).  Less than a month from the picture above and this is what it looks like now!  WOW!  I've never had grapevines before, but Steve has and he says we may even get grapes this year.  This is still not the final place for them, but it will do for this year and next year they will go into their permanent location.



This is my little container garden from last year.  It doesn't look too bad for not doing anything to it this year.   That is Sean's old wagon in the background.  Where it is now is where the Concord (red) grape will go once Steve gets a bit of time to put it in the bigger pot.





 Some pictures of columbine now.  The first two are similar to the one I posted the closeup of in the previous post but not quite the same.  The third picture is one of that original plant, still flowering after a month.  These photos were taken July 27th.

This is one of the daylilies - the Elegant Candy - very pretty!

















 This is Dragon's Blood Sedum just coming into flower.













And this is a closeup of a flower from the Hosta Francee.














On the right is a grouping of Purple Liatris or Gayfeather.  They've just started to come into flower and soon the whole long flower stalk will be purple!
















On the left is a fall phlox.  We have four different colours - white, pink, red (or deeper pink) and this one.  They smell divine!

Last but not least is the Gaillardia or Blanketflower.  Steve started these from seed in the house in early spring.  We had no idea if they would even grow, but he has done a wonderful job - they are just starting to bloom (this is the first one) and they are just magnificently coloured.  The purple flower just below it is a monkshood.  We are really excited to see these plants do so well.  We will undoubtedly do this again!

That's all for this post, and I hope you enjoyed the pictures.  Next post will be about building my booth at the Market.  Stay tuned!