Sunday's Garden Tour

Every Father's Day, our local Audobon Society has a back yard habitat garden tour.  Some years I make it, and some I don't.   I was pleased to make it to all but the one that is not someone's yard, and open to the public at other times.

This first garden may look familiar to you.  It belongs to Benjamin, who has the blog, The Deep Middle and his wife.  I love the way the plants are placed, the path through them, and the places to sit right in the garden.

Most of the plants here are native.  We have a number of plants in common, and if I find some that I saw there, we will have more of them in common soon.

I actually did find a relative of this plant yesterday.  This is salvia nemorosa plumosa.  The one I found has purple blooms, and was just called salvia plumosa.

I had this plant, Rudbeckia maxima on my list at the spring sale I went to, but they didn't bring it after all.  That was the day a friend locked her keys in her car, and when I took her home, she gave me a different tall blooming plant for the spot I had in mind.  I have a new spot for one of these when I find one.  I love it!  Benjamin said the yellow loosestrife clump has gotten bigger, but it hasn't been aggressive, so I got one because Larry had said he liked it at a garden center last week.  It filled a couple holes in the east bed nicely.

The friend I went with offered to take my picture, so I thought I'd include it.  I like the way they have the trees and bushes placed with all the other plants.  That's something I don't think I could pull off.
 

The next garden we went to was a few blocks away from the first one.

This was a more woodsy place with not as many flowers and shrubs.

There was a creek behind the trees.  I'm not sure what the big leafed plants are.

There was a nice stand of yarrow in this area.

Another few blocks, and we were at the third garden.

This was taken from the back of the back yard.  They have raised beds at different levels with a variety of vegetables and fruits.

I asked the owner when he plans to harvest his cabbage, and he said, "Four o' clock!"  That's when the tour was to end. I figured he was leaving them there for the tour, and I was right.  They sure were pretty!

Janet and I liked this container.

Here's Janet in front of the deck and cool arbor.  She has a nice big garden, and would like an arbor like this.

The next garden was on the west edge of town.  I forgot how many acres it was.  They had all kinds of planting areas, with lots of choices for critters.

I wonder how many unseen critters are in this area.  Oh, and I loved the aprons on display here and there.

There were huge grassy and meadow areas.

The squirrels in my yard would have these dumped in no time, but I sure love this feeder!

Do you see the mayapples?  There were lots of native plants, along with some pretties like hydrangeas and such on this property, some in beds together.  That made me feel better about my diverse plantings.

I like this bush, but don't remember what it is.  That head board in the background is beautiful!

Look at all those potatoes!  There are more aprons on the shed, too.

I was pleased to see a compost pile, and look, there's a bottle tree!

Do any of you grow wild quinine?  That's what this is.  I have one planted that I got from a sale at our arboretum this spring.

The last two gardens we went to are on in what I'm thinking is the center of the city, just a few miles from where I live.

Can you guess what the wildlife on this property is?

The last garden also had water, and veggies as well.

Like the previous one, there were borders with a variety of plants around the edges of the properties.

These were in the side yard.

 

This is the front yard.

This is their next door neighbors' yard.  I like the way they planted the wheelbarrow and situated it.

Thanks to all who left comments on my last post.  The garden tour made me feel better after I'd been feeling my garden has an identity crisis, what will all the different kinds of plants I have.  Well, gardens are always a work in progress.  Next year, I will not plant some of the annuals I did this year.

When I went to a local nursery yesterday, I talked to the owner about those "Do not propagate" tags.  He said people who hybridize plants and get them patented get a quarter to a couple dollars for each plant sold.  Technically, you aren't supposed to divide them or grow new plants from collected seed, even in your own garden.  He said no one goes around checking people's yards to see if they are dividing or not, but a person could get caught trying to sell a patented plant.  One of the plants I bought did not have a tag.  I hope it wasn't patented.  Three of the four plants I bought were large enough to divide into two each, and that is what I did.  It started raining as I was finishing up, and they were all looking great this morning.  We had quite the thunderstorm last night.  There were tornadoes in our state, too.

I hope you are enjoying your first day of summer.  It's cool and wet out, and after I post this, I'm going to muster up the discipline to do some housework.