Someone found my design aesthetic (collection of junk) a bit disturbing so I did a post and showed it off. https://www.houzz.com/discussions/5841380/more-disturbing-urns

Cute baby lion!! :) The last wildlife I saw in my garden was a skunk, late in the evening last week. Not as interesting as your wildlife! :)

Dig Doug: beautiful garden! I’m very envious of your Japanese maple!

The last delphinium is just starting to bloom in the background.

I removed a Therese Bugnet rose from this spot and planted this Invincibelle Limetta.

Pearly everlasting

Daylily Firestorm.

This is so weird! I had tried several times to post these pictures, but kept losing the post. I finally gave up only to come back and find them here.

i hope no duplicates show up now!

Hi north53: I don’t see duplicates for your post. Thanks for sharing pics of your beautiful garden! I’m curious, why did you remove your rose?

“I’m curious, why did you remove your rose?“

It was just too shady there and the rose would grow huge and then flop. So just a matter of the wrong plant for the spot. My backyard has gotten more shady over the years and I’m discovering lots of my perennials really prefer full sun. For that reason I’m enjoying planting in the front yard.

I tried to post here but everything I input, pictures and all, disappeared when I hit submit. I give up.

Bill_minn, that’s what happened to me too. Then after I gave up, the pictures showed up.

I'll try some more. The maintenance gardener showed up after work today and he is feeling much better about the gardens.

I was shut out from commenting for about a month not long ago. Mostly I waited until it went away. I found the site worked when I switched browsers from Edge to Firefox. That was too much effort so I just waited until it worked again.

@Bill: I had the same issue on Tuesday, it was very frustrating. Hope it works for you soon, would love to see your garden!

Just tried again to no avail. Let me try this in separate comments, maybe too many picture even though I reduce mine in size and usually have no trouble. The internet has been really slow for us lately.

I don't have large flower beds and my new yard of 7 years, which was entirely bare when I came here, is still a work in progress. :-)

My back yard deck (looking NW): The hanging pots are Mothers day gifts.

Looking SW over Juniperus Communis, a garden shed with Clematis, Irises, few volunteer Petunias and Pansies.

Over the same Juniper, looking SSE, Tsuga canadensis and some sort of panicled Hydrangea.

Noertheast corner of the yard, Japanese tree lilac, couple of yews and peonies.

Entire east side of the yard is a hedge of lilacs. I planted a row of various trees offset from the hedge.

SE corner has a pine screen along one third of the south side.

Center of the south side stands a Betula papyrifera.

And right of the birch is a couple new lilacs, Two N. Pin oaks (an alley that gets mowed more than used is left side of trees).

Far SW corner is Spruce, Fir and Redcedar. Also site of new P. mariana and L. laricina. Small northern white cedar and Amur maple (tubed) far left.

Shed on right is same one in second pic with Clematis.

Almost forgot the Acer saccharum (sugar maple) middle of the yard.

And a new Oak (Quercus bicolor) started from seed.

Front yard is small. Several trees (two on east side of house not visible), Picea glauca (left) Fraxinus nigra (left center), Acer rubrum (almost center) and Gleditsia triacanthos (farthest next to neighbors driveway). Sprirea and arborvitae inside border rocks. That is all. :-)

August always seems to be a good time in the garden - and the pictures people posted above show that!

We only had 42 milometers (~1.65") of rain in July - but we've had 83.5mm (~3.3") of rain so far in August! Some of that is likely rain that should have fallen near the end of July.... Whatever, the garden and the gardeners have been happy because the heat and humidity also went down too so we could do some work in the garden! Still lots of do though and the heat will be rising again... :-(

We were outside for awhile this morning - DH did some pruning and deadheading in the front garden while Cole and I directed work from the front porch :-) and then we all moved to the back porch for awhile. So here are some a bit odd pictures of the garden here in August!

We had some high winds during some of the rain we got this past week, which pushed the top of the Chinese wisteria to the south a bit and highlighted the need to prune some growth off (and we'll need to train new growth to fill a blank space between a horizontal limb and the upright growth...) Next up for pruning will be the Japanese wisteria which needs a severe cutting-back... Hopefully that will get done in the next few days, weather and energy permitting!

The pruning plan for today:

After pruning (if you look closely you can see DH crouched at the base of the stepladder, cleaning up a bit....)

And then we all hung out on the lounger and chairs on the back porch - a common viewing point for the backyard garden :-)

@User: so glad you were able to post pics of your lovely yard! I too think this issue might be due to the number of pics. Thanks for sharing, you have a lot of trees on your property, it must have been a lot of work planting them! I have to ask, how long did it take for the bark of your paper birch to change to white? Mine are 5 feet tall and still brown.

Hi mazerolm.

With the slow internet we've been experiencing lately, things are most likely timing out. I used to post 10 of my reduced sized pictures at a time with no problems.

It took a while for my Birch to 'whiten up'. Not sure if I dug it from the woods in 2014 or 2015. It was a 2-1/2 ft. whip. It grew quite fast. Here's a picture of it in July of 2016. About 4 ft. tall and barely any white showing at the bottom of the trunk. I know it didn't show any white the first year or two in the ground. (yes those are the same red pine in the above picture). :-)

The last couple of years it has been good to peel off with white underneath. Here was July of 2017. So 3 or 4 years since planting before it got a good start at white and then only the bottom foot or so.

By August 2017 it was 9 ft. tall so not much white at that age.

I've seen some cultivars that are white almost to the branch tips at a very young age but this one is mine and has some history behind it. :-)

This year it definitely looks like a 'Paper Birch'. The little sucker that started at the time of planting is almost as large as the main trunk and is beginning to peel off and whiten up nicely this season.

:-)

Bill - I wondered what is the variety name of the clematis on the shed and whether you have a picture of the lilac hedge in bloom in the spring...? Also, how big (LxW) is your backyard?

The Clematis is 'Ernest Markham'.

May 2018 some years are better than others.

North end of west side hedge: South end is purple. The aroma fills the air.

East hedge all purple with white scattered in. Can't find the picture right now. :0)

There's winter interest too: Silverfrost East hedge in January 2019.

The back yard is a trapezoid, part of a cul des sac. 150' east side, 120' south end, 100' west side. I got one of the best lots bc there are some 'pie shaped' lots and my lines run right up to the neighbors drive ways on both north corners. I have a picture of the lot too. :-)) North is down.

August already....Where does the time go?....

I’m sure not complaining...looking forward to fall and the cooler weather.

Thanks for the information Bill. It certainly looks like you’ve got a nice big lot with space for lots of trees :-)

@woodyoak zone 5 southern Ont., Canada: looks like your DH is experimented at pruning, he’s a keeper! :).

@GardenHo_MI_Z5: thanks for posting your pics, I hope August is better for your garden than July was! It certainly looks beautiful!

mazerolm - DH is a great garden helper and is definitely a keeper :-) He’s also a very talented photographer and I sometimes post pictures he took. (All the low-quality pictures like the ones I posted today are my point-and-shoot efforts!)

Maz thank you. Yes this month is starting off much better... it has cooled off tremendously and we even got a little rain. As you can see I have a few things blooming again and that always helps brighten your day. (Ken...see I do have more than just purples;)

Japanese Anemone

Painter's Palette

Burning Hearts

Your northern gardens (even by my standards!) look lush and happy. The things you do with such cold gardening zones is inspiring! August is so nice when it's not blazing. We are having a dry hot year, but not as how as many of you. Still, the gardens are not lush this August. My GW links are now broken, so the threads are hidden, photos are tiny, and it takes forever to look at everything. I saw the post earlier in the week with the GW links, and your photos are just beautiful!

rouge, I've tried Japanese Anemone from seed twice, the seed never germinated. My spring anemone seed does just fine. Not sure what is going on, but I still want some pink fall anemone! Yours looks happy.

This year I'm noticing for the first time how nice my hosta blooms are for this unknown variety. I generally ignore them, but these really are nice. Behind them you see coneflowers, swamp milkweed, Joe Pye Weed, jewelweed, and a hummingbird feeder in the foreground. The hummingbird who claimed this spot is HAPPY. He is constantly eating from the jewelweed, JPW, and feeder. He's circled in dark purple towards the left of the photo.

Pics from this evening...

Sloped bed with allium millennium

up close... almost in full bloom

Lotsa phlox

Driveway Delphiniums

Hey GH just like you our Millenium Alliums are coming into bloom. I like them for sure but do yo find as I do that the blooms are pretty short lived?

Rouge these are year 3 for me...and I guess I’m not very observant as I don’t even know lol. They bloom during the hottest time of the year, and I’m not out there enough to even notice.....(I don’t do well in the heat anymore)

Patrinia scabiosifolia is my favorite now.

Beautiful! Where do you live?

Woodland Sunflower:

Summer Snow Clematis:

Verbena bonariensis:

More this morning:

Earlier on this thread I posted pictures of pruning the Chinese wisteria and mentioned that the Japanese one would be pruned soon too as it badly needed cutting back. We did it yesterday morning before the weather got too hot . Today was a garbage pick-up day that included garden waste pick-up so we wanted to do the pruning yesterday as the truck can come by very early! I didn't have the camera with me when DH was pruning so I only have Before and After pictures.

This Before picture was taken Aug. 6 in anticipation of pruning/cutting it back soon. Note that the foliage almost goes to the ground in this picture.

When we pruned/cut it back, the first thing we did was cut off the bottom foliage so we could see how tall the upper structure was, then we cut the top back by about half. The Japanese wisteria is a much more vigorous grower than the Chinese one so we try to keep it shorter and more tightly controlled. Unfortunately it does not produce the secondary summer flowers that the Chinese one does when you trim back the new whippy growth. The Japanese one also produces copious root suckers still while the Chinese one stopped doing that after it was about 5 years old. If I was doing the planting again, I would not plant the Japanese one but plant a second Chinese one. The Japanese one has a very interesting twisty trunk though from new growths twisting around the main trunk. It is most visible after the leaves come off in the fall so it provides winter interest. You can see it in the second picture below.

After pruning:

Sunshine Daydream Helianthus:

Hosta Halcyon

Love this hibiscus

Roadside find... Joe pye weed (with yellow noid)

Placement of some of the Joe’s. I’m not sure how they’ll do here but I needed some thing for height, and boy are these tall...taller than myself! (Yes I’m a shorty :) looking forward to them filling in...

The major front yard project for August here was repaving the driveway! It was supposed to happen on Thursday but they didn't show up (something to do with an unexpected time slot opening up for someone to do a required test relating to their heavy equipment licence....) But we had 15 minutes' warning that they were coming yesterday! Normally we have quite a few veggie pots on the driveway but didn't plant any this year because we knew we'd have to clear them off for the paving. We still needed to clear off the driveway but at least there wan's as much stuff there as normal (so pardon the mess over by the entrance to the arbour path....!)

From the front porch:

A bit closer look at the north side (the Heptacodium tree at the back of the bed will be blooming in a couple of weeks as the monarch butterflies migrate through here....; I'm still undecided longer-term about what to do re the euonymus on the arbour....)

The south side - there are more of the red hibiscuses in bloom than can be seen in the picture and the ninebark is looking a bit skimpy after a hard prune earlier in the summer:

Up top along the scenic byway, Miscanthus sinensis 'Morning Light' mixes with perennial wildflowers. There is Joe Pye, Ironweed, Echinops, the first blooms of two kind asters and much more.

"Hi, anyone want to share pictures of their garden in August?"

Umm, no, not anymore lol.

You guys, all your pictures are so beautiful and your gardens look so wonderful and full and lush! Not only do I need to get more August bloomers, but I've got to figure out a way to garden in the heat of summer. I always give up and only venture out very early to deadhead or cut flowers or water. And my gardens show it.

Thank you all for sharing your lovely pictures, and for inspiration. Funny how something as simple as seeing two plants you have, where in your garden they are planted separately, in someone else's garden they are planted together and you're like wow, they look great together. And that was probably one of the worst sentences ever written, lol, but you get the idea. Just sometimes you don't think of a particular combination even though you have those plants in separate parts of the garden. So thanks for the ideas and inspiration!

:)
Dee

Hello! This is my first time posting in Landscape Design, nice to meet you all!

Everyone's garden is so lovely, wow.

@diggerdee zone 6 CT I know what you mean about needing more August bloomers! I was angsting out the other week about how little was blooming so I contacted a native plant person at my local botanical garden (North Carolina Botanical Garden). I got a very fast and helpful response listing four plants native to my area and appropriate for my conditions.

I haven't found them all for sale at my local nursery but the Garden also does a fall plant sale (pandemic edition) so hopefully next year my August is looking a little bloomier.

If you have a local botanic garden or extension agency try contacting them desperately for help like me. ^_~

Dee lol! That’s how I feel the end of July.

Rouge these seem to be long bloomers...they’re still going strong.

Allium millennium

back fence line with hibiscus

Lovely! What is that little tree next to the hibiscus?

Louis thank you!

It’s a young Dappled Willow. They are so pretty in the spring...starting out pink tipped turning to white, holding their color for a long time. Here is a pic from June, although it does not do it justice.

I posted earlier this month with a few landscape photos-- here's a particular specimen that started blooming just recently that I thought would be fun to share:

My Curcuma blooms from June to November in central Florida. Provides cut flowers all summer-fall!

These are from the first part of August. As you can tell, I love my Cheyenne Spirit Coneflowers.

Disclaimer: the garage is not mine.

Wow, gardenshots, just lovely! Thanks to everyone here for sharing your wonderful gardens!

:)
Dee