What a nice - and appropriate - compliment! Your garden is definitely eye candy! :-)

Just lovely! Thanks for sharing, I don't mind seeing this every season, in fact, I look forward to it.

Sherry

I love that view of the arbour especially. It has a great balance.

The whole area around the archway is especially stunning.

'woody', if I wasn't in the middle of a messy and growing home renovation I would love to drop by to see it all in person.

smashing, woody

Thank for the nice comments!

The plantings by the iron arbour are a constant work-in-progress:-). What I've been working on developing for the past two years or so - and that will take another bunch of years to complete! - is to grow 'Emerald Gaiety' euonymus up and over the arbour, clipping it close to the iron structure to turn the arbour into an evergreen arch! Emerald Gaiety is what is growing across the front porch so the arbour should nicely link to the house. A neighbour grows euonymus over her fence, keeping it closely clipped. I like the look, so her fence is what inspired me to try this.

The Heptacodium tree is in the background to the right in the arbour picture. When it blooms, it makes a nice flowery background for the arbour - especially if there are lots of monarchs fluttering about! - just as most of the perennials in the front bed are winding down their flowering. There used to be a viburnum at the corner of the garage that had nice red fruit when the Heptacodium was in bloom. Unfortunately the viburnum died a winter or two ago. Change is a constant ....

Beautiful. Now THAT'S a garden!

I like the euonymus growing up the arch. Might have to copy that idea ;)

haha, sounds like you were thinking the same thing on the arbor. I was wondering if you'd keep it clipped since the evergreen arch idea is what I liked about it as well.

katob - definitely I'd aim to keep it clipped but it's going to take a few more years before the euonymus get to the top and get trained across the top. The one on the left side now has some stems above the top - but not long enough to bend them over and weave through the slats on the top. So far, when we try to weave them in, they just pop back out. You'll notice that the euonymus on the right is much shorter still. They were both planted at the same time. The left side gets shade from the garage an hour or two before the right side. I think that helps keep the soil moist for longer, allowing the plants on that side to grow at a faster rate. There is a white clematis there as well - I thought the white would look good with the white variegation on the euonymus. It's the same variety (Henryi) that I grow into the Chinese wisteria - I like to repeat plants. The clematis has a couple flowers at the moment but they are not very visible in the pictures. There are also a couple of other clematises on there that were part of one of the earlier plantings on the arbour. We dug them out a few years ago when we dug out the honeysuckle that turned out to be Hall's I think - pretty but a PI TA to keep pruned. But most of the clematises decided to grow back! (Fortunately, the honeysuckle didn't grow back....) The honeysuckle also grew best on the left side too, so I wonder if there might also be something in the soil that is inhibiting growth in addition to the drier condition due to more sun on that side of the arbour.

The front garden is very different than our green-and-white shady backyard garden. I actually prefer the backyard garden - but at this time of year, the focus is certainly on the front garden!

Here are a couple of pictures of earlier versions of the arbour plantings:

late Sept. 2009 - the Heptacodium tree in bloom and you can see the red berries on the now-deceased viburnum:

mid June 2010 - with honeysuckle and clematis (note the vigorous growth is all on the left side....):

So it's hard to say whether the evergreen euonymus arbour - if it succeeds - will be the final version or whether I'll move on to another idea.... :-)

Haha, I don't know about you but I'm pretty sure there will never be a final version of anything here, it's always changing and that's what keeps it interesting!

I do like the honeysuckle but can imagine how much work it was keeping that in line. I have a tamer version but it's covered in mildew and I hacked most of it back a few weeks ago to get it out of my sight.

Repeating plants is an excellent idea. I should remember to do it more often since it's usually the only thing that keeps my garden from looking like a complete mess.

Wow Woody....Your beds have really filled in. So lush and lovely!

You have some very lucky neighbors! Such a beautiful garden - I especially love all of the evolutions of the arbour.

Gorgeous as always woody. Total eye candy.

Wow, really gorgeous! What a treat--I agree wholeheartedly with your neighbor!