Next tranche: I don't know how many photos I can post in one shot.

A view of the shade garden, taken a couple of weeks ago while the lilacs were in bloom.

This is the kind of thing that is mainly interesting to the gardener (and no one else): Solomon's seal. My friend gave me a piece of it years ago, which has survived the ungrateful conditions of our wood; and a few years ago DD and I found some growing locally while on a walk, which we dug up a piece of and brought home: it survived, too. So now I have Solomon's seal in my woods, and for no rational reason it makes me happy. Also a trout lily (Erythronium dens-canis), sadly under-represented in the woods and whose population I'm trying to increase. It's the plant on the left with two long speckled leaves (and a valuable seed pod).

'Clementina Carbonieri' (of commerce) with young laburnums, in the yard. This photo doesn't fully capture what an outrageous piece of color this is. There is also fading money plant, magenta and white, and, out of the photograph, culinary sage starting up with its lavender flowers.

And I now I have to go, but may be back with a few more photos later.

Very lovely and peaceful looking. Your Clementina plant is big! I have some Solomon's Seal too...I bought a pot of it at a farmer's market and now have lots in my shade garden. Also have money plant given to me by my old neighbor, Hop.

When I was a teenager I wanted to plant ferns and violets along a creek in the woods. Your last picture of the lilacs and woods reminds me of that. Not a wish for a formal garden. You must have a lot of land. The tree peony from seed is pretty big and a good accomplishment!

Okay, back again. The shade garden photo isn't showing up on my screen; is it for others?

'Général Schablikine' tumbling down the escarpment, and a glimpse of the punier 'Safrano' to the left.

In the yard: 'Souv. de Mme. Leonie Viennot' and what I bought as 'Cl. Papa Gontier', though it doesn't resemble its purported sport parent. I love the exuberance, but it's sadly obvious they weren't pruned last winter.

'Mme. Antoine Mari': for me, the quintessential Tea rose.

The escarpment. I've posted pictures of this before. Left to right, 'Sanguinea', Ceanothus thyrsiflorus repens, 'Clementina Carbonieri' (of commerce) scrambling over pittosporum.

Another shot of the yard. Left to right, 'Clementina Carbonieri' with young laburnums, 'Archduke Joseph' climbing up through the (somewhat invisible) persimmon onto the wisteria pergola, with the wisteria behind, and phlomis to the right.

Melissa - Thank you! Gorgeous pictures, and I love how money plant is in so many of them. I love it - I love how it makes purple flowers in Spring (and white? Mine are all purple, but there appear to be some white ones in your pics), and how the dried seed pods make great dry flower arrangements (after you remove the papery cover & seeds). I love how, when I sit outside removing the papery cover of the seed pods, the seeds go all over the garden, so the money plant comes up the following Spring as a surprise in many different places.

Your roses are just the way I like them - growing as they please - to me that is the nicest look.

It is so nice to see the various beautiful/elegant nooks in your garden that we hear about but don't see very often - please post photos whenever you get the urge - there is always something doing something wonderful.

Jackie

Fantastic plants, Melissa. I'm inspired by your Clementina Carbonieri -- I've got one coming any day now, and I hope that mine attains even 1/3 the splendor of yours. I love naturalistic feeling of your garden. Its informality works so well with the character of the types of plants you are growing. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Melissa, thank you for the gorgeous photos! I love your naturalistic style. This is my favorite too. You are ahead of me here this year.

I love all the plants and especially the roses. I have the same ones and this is a thrill to see yours.

Thanks, all. Erasmus, the woods are my shade garden, and it's a fun environment to work in. I concentrate on early spring flowering forest floor plants. There are drainages running through the woods, and I've planted along them, mainly spring snowflake, and, yes, violets. I would guess you can grow bleeding heart? This is one I would love to have, but our conditions aren't right for it. On the other hand we have hellebores. The woods and garden occupy a few acres, though I've shown only a small part of the area, the most developed and satisfactory, in these photos.

About formal/informal that many of you have commented on, I have no aesthetic quarrel with formal gardening, but our property and resources just don't favor that kind of treatment. The land is irregular in outline and contours--if I had a flat rectangle to grow things in the garden would be mightily different--and all the formal gardens I've seen have a considerable investment in costly hardscape, beyond our means. The garden isn't random: I invest a lot of time thinking about where to put what, generally successfully for my tastes. But regularity in this context would look silly, I think.

Jackie, money plant locally generally grows in colonies of either white or more-or-less-magenta. We collected seeds from both colors and scattered them about, and now have the mixture you see in the photos. The plant is an excellent filler, going everywhere, as you say, and easy to pull where it's not wanted, and the colors combine well with other spring flowers. Money plant has great names. In Italian it's called "monete del Papa", the pope's coins, or, a name I just learned from my neighbor, "medaglie del Papa", the pope's medals. And of course there's the botanical name, Lunaria.

K S, you're welcome. 'Clementina Carbonieri' figures in a lot of these photos because she's at the height of her bloom, and because she's a big girl, sprawling over a lot of the escarpment and trying to take over the last of the grass in the lawn. I'm hoping to be able to get her up into the larburnum once it's larger. CC is a little difficult because her flowers burn easily and fade off badly, though the plant is forever vigorous and healthy, but when she's good, there's none like her. I don't know how well CC takes the kind of cold weather you'll have. This particular plant is almost twenty years old, so she's had lots of time to grow, and I don't prune roses to contain them if it's not strictly necessary. Good luck with her!

Sheila, I think we are on the same track in our gardening and what we want to accomplish. I hope you have a beautiful high spring. Here, the day of rain we got--at last!--has pushed the warm climate roses into the declining curve of their spring flowering. But the herbaceous peonies and the once-flowering roses are just starting: still more spring ahead.

I have many more plans than I expect to have years and energy to accomplish them. I was looking at a failed major project down in the new part of the big garden and thinking over how to fix it; actually, fix two major failed projects. The yard and shade garden are fairly complete; so are parts of the old section of the big garden, though they need significant annual maintenance. But there's so much to do elsewhere, important additions, or, in places, throwing out everything already done and restarting from scratch. Huh.

Melissa - I love your positive look into the future, and your seemingly endless energy! I realize you probably, like the rest of us, don't really have endless energy, but your attitude is so good - you get more accomplished than you would without it, I'll bet. I get encouraged to do more myself every time I read one of your so well written posts. The photos, however, are so fantastic an addition to what you write - please do keep taking and posting them -

Jackie

What a treat! Thank you, Melissa. Your Clementina Carbonieri is spectacular. To think my tiny baby may look like that one day. All of your garden is lovely.

Beautiful landscapes, Melissa! I agree that 'Mme Antoine Mari' truly is the epitome of elegance and the quintessential tea -- even the texture of its petals, alone, is entrancing .... 'Clementina Carnonieri' is also so beautiful, and the foliage never less than perfect, but the flowers are so fragile and the heat and dryness here were too much here -- one had to enjoy the flowers by 10 am or so, as a rule, because after that they were crisped.

I was just looking at all of your photos again, and noticed the single red/crimson china rose 'Sanguinea' (in commerce as). I love china roses, and they love it in our climate. I don't have any single ones. Hmm...

Jackie

Fabulous pictures @Melissa Northern Italy zone 8! I'm so glad you posted some pictures so we can see what you have been describing! It all looks so peaceful and lush.

Money plant, Lunaria, etc. but my favorite name for it is "honesty". So named because the seed pods are dull and unattractive on the out side but beautifully dazzling on the inside just like honesty.

Cath

Cath - I had heard the name "honesty" for it, but I never knew the why - thank you!

Jackie

You're welcome, Jackie.

Cath

Great pictures, Melissa! Your roses are way ahead of mine; so far I just have a few blooms open. I'm cutting grass, too; a HUGE job, but I'm trying to see it as a blessing-all this organic matter!- as you once commented. The weather's beautiful; I wish I could be out there every day, but after all the work I did yesterday I feel awful tired -plus, I'm so chewed up by bugs ; bites all over me. So I think I'll rest up today and go back tommorrow. I hope to card-board up some new areas to start getting them under control.

Ceanothus are just THE BEST-so beautiful when in bloom, and all the rest of the time, too. So effective for choking out weeds as well. My favourite (so far) is "Concha" ,with it's intensely dark blue flowers and dark green leaves. I hope to find more varieties ; it's a shame that this splendid plant isn't more popular here in Italy. I also love lunaria-another faithful friend to the wild gardener in that it can colonize large areas,giving uglier plants a run for their money. Also borage is good for this; I suppose the first seeds were introduced to my garden one time when I collected someone else's grass clippings. It seems to enjoy the conditions in my garden and plants are popping up, more numerous every year. Unwanted ones are easy to pull out, and I think the pulled must be good for the soil-they are so juicy and succulent -looking, lol.