June Was Abloom with Colors of Summer

Trying to achieve all-season color in all of my garden beds hasn't been quite that easy. Ok, yes, most of the beds do have some flowers blooming in them but not as many as I would like nor as colorful. I've achieved that aspiration in only one of my garden beds, and that's why this post won't show all of the beds that I posted in the spring. A wall of green leaves and clumps simply isn't that interesting. That's "evil eye gardening" as Dorothy Sucher would say. She came up with that term for the gardener that disparages her garden fearing the evil eye if she praises her garden too much. As Dorothy discerningly said in her book, The Invisible Garden, "The gardener is always painfully aware of the gap between the dream and the reality...whatever is achieved is nevertheless a betrayal of that first radiant vision".

How true that is! When I first set out to create my garden 5 years ago, I envisioned winding paths through lush gardens, an arbor loaded with pink new dawn roses, a gleaming, twinkling pond with the soothing sound of a small waterfall, vegetable beds full of plump veggies and a front cottage garden hiding the view of the busy street. Well, that hasn't been the reality. The good news is I can always keep trying. I'm just too impatient though...sigh. The reality is that my garden beds are too small, I planted things way too closely so now I have no room for that winding path for two to walk along side by side and the pond is surrounded with weeds. As for the front cottage garden, the white picket fence isn't happening. Oh bother, as Pooh says...

In June, the brightest, boldest bed was filled with purple coneflowers, butterfly weed, bee balm and wild bergamot, Stella de Oro daylillies, and coreopsis. It's the garden bed next to the drive way with a small, narrow unfinished brick path. I love its bold bright tones of gold, orange, purple and hot pink. In the spring, this bed was full of beautiful peonies, irises, bearded iris and tulips. As pretty as it it now, its missing a certain je ne sais quoi.

The brick path leads to the bird bath where more purple coneflowers grow along with Culver's Root, white phlox, oakleaf hydrangea, fothergilla and tall panic grass. I just put in a circle trellis and planted a clematis vine that will eventually grow over it. Never cared to have clematis in my garden before but I couldn't resist getting this one because of its name, Clematis, Duchess of Edinburgh. Sounds so lovely, maybe it'll give my garden an air of a formal romantic garden. Maybe romantic country garden is more like it since I have several barn birdhouses and that wooden red wheelbarrow.

View of the oakleaf hydrangea above the bird bath and the fothergilla to left of the hydrangea. They'll have pretty fall foliage!

Better view of the circle trellis in a temporary spot, and unfinished brick path...ran out of bricks :(

One of my favorite birds after chickadees and titmice are goldfinches. Their bright yellow color stands out among the green leaves and flowers. I took these photos from inside the house.

Tucked away in the back of the yard is the woodland garden with a dry stream bed running along its edge. More like woods' edge since there's just one deciduous tree there and some evergreens which are small so not too shady like a true woodland. Here the milkweeds, sundrops, wild bergamot and wet tolerant shrubs keep their feet wet along the stream bed that holds water when it rains (the stream bed needs to be redone since most of the rocks have been covered by weeds and years of fallen leaves covering over). I recently planted a campanula and larkspur but they have yet to bloom. Fingers crossed they'll do well. The cardinal flower that I planted two summers ago didn't come back. Not sure why since it prefers wet sites.

Clockwise from top left: 1: Milkweeds (pink blooms), Guara whirling butterflies (white blooms), wild bergamont (lavendar color); 2: Milkweed, Asclepias Incarnata; 3: Coreopsis American Dream; 4: Milkweed that planted itself by Tim's shed; 5:Center pic, yellow rose. 

The front beds and other side beds aren't blooming so much. They're just a wall a of green and a few flashes of color here and there so I need to place new plants that will bloom in that transition period after spring and during early summer. What's in the front bed now will be in bloom a bit later this summer and the solidalgo and anemone in late summer/early fall but I'd like to see some color all throughout the season especially in this bed since I can see it from the living room. It looked pretty with the hollyhocks earlier but I removed them because they got ugly nasty rust spots on them.

Front yard bed with purple coneflowers in bloom.

All green, just the yellow rose and milkweed in bloom. Needs more color and texture! I started planting grasses for texture like the little blue stem and switchgrass.

And so that's it for now. Hope to show you the veggies and pond in a future post.