It's so beautiful!!

Yes it's a private garden. Quite amazing and the owner/gardener was just as nerdy as me and answered questions about plants with scientific names. A real expert! She said that she plants about 250-300 flats of annuals every year along with the backbone of shrubs, vines, trees, and perennials. I don't think I've ever seen so many pollinators in any garden I've been in, but there was a total riot of flowers. I saw at least 4 species of butterflies, a hummingbird moth, hummingbirds, and lots and lots and lots of bees, flies, etc. The garden just hummed.

I can't edit the original post any more so the rest of the photos will be in follow up comments.

"a total riot of flowers", looks like it, beautiful! I love that phrase, that's my dream, the ultimate goal, I know I will have made it as a gardener when I achieve a total riot of flowers!

any annuals that really stuck out to you?

Annuals that caught my eye:

More different colors of breadseed poppies than I had ever seen. Self-sowers.

Several types of Nicotiana which I love to have in the garden for late afternoon into night vanilla scent on top of lovely flowers. Self-seeds for me.

A bazillion petunias.

In the photo 2 up along with the lacecap hydrangea, heliotrope, scented vanilla but not as strong as the Nicotiana.

Impatiens balsamina is the red at the front of the second photo, and at the back of the same photo is cleome and cosmos.

Dill in flower in a garden with rhododendrons and ferns and hosta and heliotrope was a gorgeous combo.

A lovely red Salvia that I hoped was perennial, but when I asked I found out it wasn't. It wasn't a usual bedding Salvia.

veggie garden

More ornamentals

Good grief! What a great eye she has for combinations and design. Did you happen to ask her how often she moves plants and rearranges, or does she understand what works with what when she put them in the first time?

The owner is of an age to have retired a few years ago, and said she learned to garden from her grandmother, mother, and Christopher Lloyd, so I think she has an excellent grasp of what will do well where. I didn't specifically ask, though. Since the annuals are replanted every year, she can change those around as suits her fancy, and I think she must since I saw a few oddball plants such as a random love-in-a-mist/Nigella in the center of a petunia mass planting, probably a seedling from the previous year's plantings.

Did you (she) mean 200 FLATS or 200 6 PACKS? 200 flats would mean 1000s of annuals every year. Unless she had Christopher lyod's gardening staff......

Flats. She is retired and I believe she said that she has one person one day a week who also works in the garden. I imagine that they spend a LOT of time planting in spring! For instance, the photo under "a bazillion petunias" has daylilies over to the left, but all the rest of the color in the photo is annuals in a bed that varies from perhaps 8' deep by the tree down to perhaps 4' over to the right. Virtually all the gardens had at the very least a front border of annuals, and many had large swaths of taller annuals interspersed, particularly cleome and cosmos. In the second photo I posted up top, at least half of the plant matter and the majority of what's blooming is annuals. Makes me tired just to think of planting all those and I imagine it takes several weeks to get them all in.

what a beautiful garden..I'm the world's slowest gardener and could never get that many annuals planted..a mass planting of annuals sure makes an impact..

I always stall at annuals because the frugal part of me can't stand the gardening bill in the hundreds of dollars for something that lasts one season. I Wintersowed River Rose Lobelia and it is doing so well I'll do that again, probably each year. But, based on these photos, maybe I need to realize the value of spending some $ on annuals. Shoot, if I'd just cut my red wine consumption in half I could pay for all those annuals.

Consider me impressed. And a bit depressed over my stodgy borders. I really cannot imagine planting all those annuals. And Christopher Llyod probably had 5 full time gardeners.

NHBabs, your photos are a lot better than mine. For someone who asked, this was one of three gardens in NH that were open to the public on July 22 and 23 to support the Garden Conservancy. I went to two but should have spent more time in both. The owner said she loves chemistry and readily reeled off the formula she uses for potting soil mixed with the compost from Benson Farm in Gorham ME. I was stunned by the long border of heliotrope on the other side of the barn. I agree that some of the annuals self seeded. I saw the single tall nicotiana by the front door.

the top photo is a different angle to the bottom right corner of the third photo. Wish I had a photo of the red and cream small sunflowers on the side of the garage. Middle photo is side entrance to home with renovated porch. All sections of the home and barn are more than 100 years old.

This grassy path leads to an amazing koi pond. She said is was originally designed to be 10x10 but she changed it to 30 x 15. The vegetable raised beds are on the other side of the barn and house from here. It was so nice to wander around. And well worth the travel time. There were not a lot of people there when I was around 10:30am on Sat but some had come up from MA.