Arlene, you have done a good job of choosing plants so your corner is full of bright colors but now and in the spring.

Lois, those spring flowers are definitely worth waiting on the first mowing. They look like Johnny Jump Ups which pop up around my yard throughout the growing season. If I see them first I dig them up and move to a spot where they are protected. I don't grow roses but can appreciate how lovely your look.

Valree3, you have done a wonderful job breaking up the expanse of green lawn. Your garden looks beautiful set against the background of all those trees and that brilliant blue sky. Great plant choices for both color and texture. Where do you live that it is freezing already? Mountains? Don't expect frost here until first part of October.

Valree, I would also love to know where you are where it gets cold early and yet you can have such a lush amazing garden! What a paradise you have there.

This is from just now. A moon flower bud (might it bloom soon?) with an old No Parking sign my dh somehow acquired. I just saw the cool juxtaposition of the arrows and had to take a picture.

Cardiocrinum giganteum

I love threads like this, we get to peek into everyone's gardens, from corners loaded with color, sweeping vistas and even closeups of some of our favorite plants.

Annette

I

I live in the northeastern part of Nevada. Zone 4. The Great Basin desert. This picture was taken a few minutes ago and it's the same shot as picture #2 in my previous post. We normally get a frost around the 2nd or 3rd week of August and then an Indian summer till mid sept. Didn't get a frost this August. We almost always get a frost the 2nd week in June and didn't get one this summer. It's been an usual gardening and weather year! Love the moonflower bud, it's so unique and beautiful

Beautiful pictures everyone. Thanks for sharing.

Wow, valree33, your season is even shorter than mine. Shows the varied conditions that exist in the same zone.

That is a great cardiocrinum photo, Annette. I do not remember ever seeing a cardiocrinum, is it fragrant?

Thanks, bella rosa.

Bobbie, when my cardiocrinum blooms it fills the whole garden with a delicious fragrance, I think if I ever had two blooming at the same time it just might be a tad overwhelming, maybe not :), I have yet to have that happen. I've given so many offsets away I am just now getting one bloom each year.

Annette

Since I have recently moved I have no pictures at this house. Not much to see any way. I had 47 wild rain lilies, aka cooperia drummundii, blooming Tuesday. Then around noon the mowers came and mowed then down. They were too scattered to try to avoid them. I had never picked one before. Turns out they have a delicate scent similar to jassamine. http://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=CODR2

Nice shady area, Cynthia. I like the different shapes and textures of the hosta leaves. An interesting way to use several variegated plants in one area but still keep them from seeming like too much.

Cyn, absolutely lovely.

Annette

My urban front yard in July...

My Climbing Hydrangea in June.

tj

You sure can tell these pictures are not here in TX lol I would kill for a climbing hydrangea! Thanks for posting.

Great pics, love these threads!

Heres a few from my beds...

More roses :-)

As the season winds down and with first frost warnings being posted tonight it is nice to see all these lush gardens. TFS

Lois, Lovely Roses!! If I put my nose any closer to the monitor, I could possibly smell them!!!

If good gardeners are the ones with" green thumbs" , What kind of thumbs do successful rose gardeners have eh?

Picture perfect! I would love to come see your garden some day!

Sabji, you'll need to wait a few more years before my garden is worth seeing. Someday it will be like gardenho's but right now its just a few flowers stuck around the yard.

Lois,

With big yards ( mine too) it does take a long time!!

It is better than mine! LOL. Mine is a mess. Which is why I am thinking of growing more flowers than just a few marigolds and Gardenia.

All these beautiful pictures come in my dreams( YES!! ) and they keep nudging me to do more flowers..

Thank you for posting them.

Wow - who knew there was a climbing Hydrangea!! Not me but I'm on the hunt now. I'm almost embarrassed to post, but here we go. Let's see if I got any good pics this year!

Gorgeous Dahlia - almost dinner-plate size. Manhattan Lights - it changes colour as it opens and the petals reflex.

Rubrum lilies - I can almost smell them!! And they look good with the cosmos foliage.

I'll try to a more panoramic photo of our yard, but I am so enthralled with my new camera and my ability to get pics like this!!

This is fun - c'mon guys - post more!!

Nancy.

Midnightsmum, Love the dahlias; they are on my list to try and grow in 7b since some might be winter hardy down here... The lilies are to die for; I am not sure how well they can handle the heat so they are a little further down the list for me now.

The pictures of gardens on this thread are stunning, my favourite flower is the peony. I snapped this picture of my Salmon Dream and when I looked at it I thought I had two spots on my lens, I zoomed in and realized it was two tiny bees. They look like they are communicating.

I planted 2 peonies in spring... (zone 7 b raleigh nc) and both look terrible...

what can the matter be? I need to revive them. They are in loamy soil.. in mostly sunny location.

Number one, peonies like to be planted in the fall when cooler ground helps them produce new roots. If yours were bare root in the spring that can be an issue. The plant has to then rely on the stored energy in the existing root system to push out stems, leaves, blossoms, and roots. If it was a root with less than 3 eyes it can take a long time to recover. This is not an issue if the plant was an immediately transplanted one, but even these can be set back. What exactly to you mean by looking terrible? Loamy soil, and full sun are not a detriment to peony growth, they are exactly what a peony likes.

Hello Ubro

Thanks! These were plants I got from a nursery in spring. It did well for a while, ... put new leaves and a bud,.. but the bud just went brown, did not bloom. Then the entire plant turned brown. I did water them as we had a dry summer.

I guess I will do fall planting for them , now on...

sounds like you could have a case of botrytis, it is a fungal disease that affects peonies and for stressed ones it can kill them. I would not give up hope though, underneath the ground they could still have some buds living. Leave them till next year and see or poke around gently to check if the roots have pink buds on them.

Thanks! Will do and post!!

Also, if there are any leaves or stem left in the vicinity of the plant, remove them and put in the trash, not the compost. Good hygiene around peonies helps prevent recurrences of fungus in succeeding years, at least this far north. I haven't ever gardened in your area, so I am not entirely sure that this preventative measure also works in areas that don't have really cold winters.

Good point!! Nothing around it. Just wood chips mulch to prevent grass.

I just hope it survives the winter and comes back again.

Good advice NHbabs, good hygiene works to prevent botrytis even in my zone botrytis can survive the cold winters on the old stems and leaves. I take mine off and burn them in the fall.

I kept a spring dug peony, from a friend's garden, in a pot until fall. The leaves died back but when fall planting time came I found the roots firm so planted it and it did well the next spring. Think it even had a few blossoms.

ETA The potted plant did not have fungus.

You did right, mnwsgal--- The peonies bought in pots in the spring are best kept in the pot and planted in the fall. That said, it does not mean that with good garden practices you cannot transplant in the spring. But buying bare roots for spring planting is not a good idea.

Your photos are so inspirational!

tsugajunkie What do you have your beautiful climbing hydrangea climbing on? What kind of support?

jlsch, climbing hydrangea clings through little aerial roots that act rather like suction cups on flat surfaces. So it doesn't need a trellis or support; it provides its own. If you look carefully at the older branches that diagonal up to the right in this image, you may be able to see some of them, sort of fuzzy dark outlines to the branches.

I didn't take many larger view photos this year; shrubs and trees that were borderline were damaged by our seriously cold temperatures, so I had too many bare, dead branches I didn't want in photos. Here's one spring photo.

A few early summer shots

The left side of this bed was planted over the last 2 years and so is still a bit sparse.

The bed along the back of the house that has gold, orange and pops of blue for most of the season, is most often seen from above (kitchen windows). {Please overlook all the dead branches. The Viburnum had to come out left center but I am hoping that with some careful pruning next spring I can reshape the Kousa dogwood to something nicer than it was this season.}

This isn't garden, yet, but my husband gave me permission to convert the grass closest to the camera into pollinator habitat. As long as nothing is tall enough to obstruct our view of the woods, he said I can take as much of the sunny area as I want. I think I'll try to control myself and not bite off too much. It isn't visible in the picture, but there is a concrete patio where the photographer is standing. It is about eight feet wide and runs the length of the house. The "lawn" slopes down gently as soon as you step off the concrete, and it is a hugely popular spot for mole tunnels, which the dogs then dig holes into. So, mowing this area is dangerous for ankles and clogs the mower with dirt.

The picture was taken for the autumn colors, but it is a nice "before" photo for comparison next fall. We'll see how well we do.

Martha

Ooh, what a nice big space you have. I like the idea of planting for pollinators. Looks like you'll be busy wintersowing!

This thread is full of glorious photos and beautiful gardens. Thank you to everyone who has posted, and please keep them coming. My garden is small, urban, and young, but I dream of what it could become over time.

Tulips on a sunny spring day.

May Night Salvia - I will be cutting this back hard after its initial flush this year. I did nothing but deadhead it last season and it looked ratty for the majority of the summer.

Petunias from seed, wintersown. Their parent was the solid papaya color, but I got some variegated, and some pink ones out of the seeds I collected.

Sweet peas under the never inhabited bird house.

Lavatera trimestris

Nigella

Lavender, Nicotiana, and a white miniature rose that bloomed its heart out all spring, summer, and fall.

I bought an old homestead 5 years ago, there was no garden..I have a few acres of fields that I have started opening up...I even garden in my ditches.

Marielle, do you have any pictures of your ditch garden?

Lois...here are 3 pics of my ditches to give you an idea. They're constantly changing depending on the season. Was able to grow some Ninebarks and forest Willows.

Marielle, what gorgeous ditch gardens. I am especially impressed by your lupines and envious of those who can grow them successfully.

Marielle, I love your ditch gardens, but then I am partial to a more wild look, especially with flowers.

Lovely ditch gardens!

I love looking at everyone's gardens! I dream of the day I've tamed this place a bit and I can spend more time picking specimen plants and less time desperately trying to fill in empty areas to keep them from eroding and/or getting overrun again by invasives. Here are a few shots of the parts I've gotten to so far...

My giant hollyhocks, which I winter sowed last year. They bloomed through January, after which I trimmed them back. We'll see if I get a second year out of them. I'd love to have collected seeds but I never saw any. You can see the giant rhododendrons in the background.

The 20' tall rhododendrons flowering last spring. I inherited these with the property. Anything that survived 20 years of neglect is obviously planted in the right place!

Bearded iris growing underneath my deck on the edge of Puget Sound. It's actually a listed invasive here, but from the research I've done it only spreads along fresh waterways, not salt water, so I'm thinking I'll leave it be.

And in the true spirit of a cottage garden, broccoli for miles...

...and onion braids. We just finished the last of the onions last week.

Gorgeous view, PugetSound!

Thanks! I have to remind myself to look up from the gardening and enjoy the view sometimes. I guess that's the mark of a gardener? I go out to enjoy the view and end up weeding for an hour...

My home was built last summer and I've been busy turning it into the cottage garden I envision. The yard was done by the builder with some basic plants; a small patch of turf with some boxwood, mini day lilies and ornamental grasses. I've removed some of the lawn to expand the beds, planted about 10 roses and a few other perennials. In the front of my fence I've planted walker's low catmint and plan to add Shasta daisies this spring. I have two climbing roses that I hope to drape over the fence along with clematis. I also am trying to get a blue moon wisteria to grow up over the porch.

After I planted my roses, but before removing some of the lawn

The catmint in front of the fence along with the pink impression tulips I planted this fall

I'm up to my ears in seed packets to winter sow. Trying to add to the garden economically. Will be trying Shasta daisy, black eyed Susan, purple come flowers, sweet peas, sweet William, Johnny jump ups and lots and lots of sweet alyssum.

reesepbuttercup - love the name! - you have to post pics of your garden once it's in bloom. your house is so adorable. i love the yellow color. i would add shasta daisies with the catmint. oh, and maybe a trellis with a purple clematis. i can go on. :-)