New to gardening, help.

15 years ago

When I was a kid we moved to 10 acres in the country and my dad had about 1/2 acre plowed for a garden. The whole family worked together for a while. Then us city folks found out that gardening was a lot of work. I kinda retired from any kind of gardening.

55 years later I am a retired commercial artist. Three years ago we remodeled one of our rent houses and moved into our small town from the country. What was a rent house is now our home. I did not garden in the country. We have a back yard that is about 35' by 65', mostly shaded by two big ok trees.

During that 3 years I have been building a lot of "HardScape". Last January I built a small green house and planted probably 50-75 packages of seeds. Some came up, some of them grew a little bit when I planted them outside in about mid-April. I find that I am good at building stuff for the garden, sorry at growing anything.

This year I hope to do much better. About all that I had any lick with last year was a lot of Caladiums, they looked real pretty. I also planted some Dahlias, they had a few pretty flowers, but the plants fell over on the ground and looked BAD. I really want to have lots of flowers and lots of color this year. I don't mind doing the work, but my budget will be maybe $500.00 this year for plants. I could sure use some help and I can coach you on how to build stuff.

I have a lot of pictures of my garden construction at:

http://gallery.me.com/rolacoy#100374&bgcolor=black&view=grid

These first 10 pictures at this link show the flower beds that I have. The rest of the pictures are of some botanical gardens that we saw on a trip.

http://gallery.me.com/rolacoy#100382&bgcolor=black&view=grid

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Comments (4)

rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
15 years ago
I see something that worries me. Is much of that extensive hardscape placed over the root/soil system of the trees?

Aside from that, it appears that your garden areas are pretty shady. Is that correct? If so, you'll need to concentrate on shade loving perennials, shrubs, and annuals. This might explain why your caladiums did so well. What kind of things are you interested in growing?

Beautiful work! I love your building constructions.
rolacoy
Original Author
15 years ago
Some areas get about 4 hours of sun, but some only get a hour. Last Summer we were up and went to a couple of botanical gardens. We photographed some plants and the name tags. I would like to grow some of the plants that we saw. I really like Cornflowers, they are so colorful, but like the sun. Actually I am open to anything that is colorful and I know what ever I plant will have to do well in shade.

http://gallery.me.com/Rolacoy#100440&bgcolor=black&view=grid

The trees really worried me also and I have tried to not cover the root systems any more than I have to.
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kept
15 years ago
Sounds like the shade is your problem. As long as your sure you have lots of good soil for the plants to grow in then it's a matter of finding plants with lots of color that like shade. I have a small woodland garden and irises and day lilies do really well. Irises for the spring and day lilies for summer. Inpatients can be found in many different colors and phlox do well to. You should be able to find some other shade loving flowers on the web.
Good luck,
Vicki
rolacoy
Original Author
15 years ago
The garden is mostly shade, but I don't see that as a problem. You are right I need plants that grow in the shade. I am going to get a soil tester Monday and check the soil.

I have some seeds coming from a seed company. I will read on the packages to see how much sun they need. Last year I planted seeds in the greenhouse and then moved them to the garden some in the shade and some in the sun. They mostly died, I don't know what happened.