Worth the wait!

very nice. abundance is the key.

Pretty!

That looks so pretty! Keep the pictures coming as you continue to plant! I don't blame you a bit for wanting to sit and just admire your work-I would feel the same!

The hollyhocks have returned better than last year when they bloomed very late.

The lacecap hydrangea we inherited with the house is in glorious bloom.

The bright pink mophead hydrangea was a gift from our new neighbors. It quite likes being tucked up under the pale pink fuschia on this moist bank with a fern or two to keep it company

This Liberty apple is my most productive espaliered fruit tree this year.

And finally the Crocosmia Lucifer which are just coming into bloom. We can see these from the house and they're spectacular!

Oh, how beautiful! I love the gardens and that view is incredible! Really like the espaliered fruit tree.

Thanks! I espaliered about 20 fruit trees along my terraces, but they're only 2 years old so they're just getting started.

Thanks for sharing these photos. I have been following your winter sowing efforts and am delighted to see your full gardens.

There are still a lot of bare, scraggly and weedy areas. Give me a decade or two and I'll really have it going. At least I won't run out of room for plants any time soon!

20 fruit trees! That's awesome!!

I'm curious....is crocosmia invasive in your neck of the woods?

Just lovely. Thank you for sharing.

I hope Crocosmia's not invasive. Yikes! As you can see I put in a whole hillside of it in an area that was not hospitable to much else. Although if I have to be invaded, it beats a lot of the alternatives.

It certainly survived 20 years of neglect on this property. It doesn't look like it was trying to take over the world like the ditch lilies though.

Oh, interesting! You actually planted all that crocosmia! It looks awesome! I had thought maybe you planted a handful and they were ding a lot of spreading.

I planted 120 corms. I rescued a clump the size of a man's shoe from a trash can when builders were digging along my foundation. The soil on this bank is eroded solid clay that is slimy in the winter and the consistency of cement in the summer, so I was really excited to find something other than listed invasives that would grow here!

LOL! You must be a mind reader! The other day my small clump of crocosmia caught my eye and all of a sudden it dawned on me that I never asked you how many you planted originally to get that look. So interesting about them living in that type of soil. I'll have to let my mom know as she happens to have a slope with lots of clay. Might be just the ticket!

I figure anything that survived 20 years of neglect in this garden before we bought the place is fairly happy here, so I started with those plants and I'm working my way out. The cocosmia is really going now!

Do the deer bother the crocosmia? I love them! (Not the deer :) )

I'd be surprised if they didn't. They'll eat most things. My front yard is fenced so they can't get in.

I figured! Thank you.

Oh wow! That's a great shot!

I've never had the deer touch my crocosmia and they definitely browse in that area.

Well they definitely ate my day lilies last year. Not that it slowed the day lilies down much. :)

Nice to see your work paying off and I love that you've reused plants that a previous owner planted. It gives the garden some history. That hillside of Crocosmia is stunning (as is your view!) I have Lucifer, and have found that the voles eat some each year so that I am now down to one lonely plant. They don't seem to be a favorite food, nowever, since it has taken them about a decade to reduce them to this point. Previously I think that their reproduction and the voles' munching was fairly well matched. I think that I will need to get some more and plant them with some protection next time.

I love finding the history in this garden. The house is over 100 years old, so there's a lot of history! We kept everything we could from the previous garden. We have some spectacular 25' tall rhododendrons, a couple azaleas, a scattered collection of old roses, a few hydrangea, fuchsia, Aucuba japonica, Iris, an ancient Japanese cherry, ditch lilies, and the crocosmia, plus of course the 100' Western Red Cedars. The rest didn't survive the 20 years of neglect, so we had a lot of of planting to do once we'd cleared the invasives

We do have voles, but I think the raptors must keep them down because we don't see them very often. We have a bald eagle that lives at the end of our garden, and something's been keeping the pigeon population down. We occasionally find a head or a wing.

We had a gopher problem where we used to live. It really is the most frustrating thing to have your plants topple over rootless.

Some of the old roses...