CDLV Garden Progress, Take Two

I know I said that I would be back sooner than this, but you have to understand the amount of work putting on a new roof puts on someone like me. You see, we live in a fairly decent size house, with a high-pitched roof, which makes the install of a completely new roof quite difficult and therefore much more expensive than I'm even willing to say. Thank goodness this is not a yearly repair. I, of course, asked how I could get a discount from the original price he quoted me, and he told me that if I picked up the shingles, it'd save me $1,000. I jumped on it, after all, don't you know what I could do with $1,000?! After long days of picking up two layers of shingles (those things are heavy) there was just not a shred of get-up-and-go left in my body.

Today, however, I'm back on top, and thought I'd give you a little tour of the garden, fresh after a heavy rain.

That's right. Rain! Thank goodness! I just planted a ton of pots last weekend and they needed some liquid attention! I also bought this awesome armillary built right here in Western New York while I was at the Lewiston Garden Fest. My friend and client Judy also bought some things from this guy - you'll see those when I get around to photographing my latest project with her, later.

For those of you who don't remember, or who are new to the CDLV garden; I live in an old neighborhood of homes built on fairly narrow lots. My backyard is about 90' long, and 14' wide. So, I thought that the best way to make it feel larger was to make it into separate spaces. Near the house we have the round garden, now filled with gravel, which includes a fountain and a shade garden built up with natural slate stones from the Niagara Gorge. Then there's the long garden, where all of my sun plants thrive, and then at the very back next to the garage; the pergola. This tiny little garden is off the garage and creates the entrance to the pergola, so I figured the armillary would fit here perfectly!

This garden is filled with perennials, and the annuals are planted in giant pots. Coneflower, Black Eyed Susan, Snake Root, Coral Bells, Day Lilies, Climbing Hydrangea,  Jacobs Ladder, and Azalea make up the bed, and in the pots: ivy, purple potato vine, dragon wing begonia, petunia, and "spider plant" or cleome. Love this stuff!

For whatever reason, maybe all the rain, my astilbe are all FINALLY blooming this year! This white one is beautiful against the green of the hydrangea leaf and those bright red Asiatic lilies.

I just had to show you this photo. My coneflower are coming up quite nicely, I love them at this point. It's like a little piece of art!

The dragon wing begonia are spread throughout the garden in pots and in hanging baskets. This pot, near the back porch, has English ivy, dragon wing begonia, and white fuchsia
.

In another pot, the dragon wing begonia is planted with your standard variety of begonia and English ivy, then set in a bed of creeping jenny. Love that stuff ... you see it in lots of places in the garden at CDLV. It's a fun shade of green and a such a light creeper that it doesn't choke anything else out.

Even Mr. Earl got a few dragon wing begonias in the chimney liner behind him. Those purple sweet potato vines are really starting to leaf out! It'll really be beautiful as it starts to "fall" down along side of those super white calla lilies you can see just the left.

From the pergola, you can see where the small garden where the new armillary went wraps around (the ginger ale coral bells and creeping jenny) and where the long garden wraps back along the fence. The peninsula where the birch trees are planted section off the round from the grass.

Does anyone know what this is? I don't think it's a weed. I planted so many things in my rock garden, and I didn't mark one of them! I'm assuming it's a variety of rock cress, but I just love the blooms ... such a pretty purple.

Right off the back porch, before you get into the round garden, is Scott's lily garden. Remember in Progress Post One, just below this one, I showed you these guys closed up but about to burst? Well, here they are! They smell so sweet! It's the perfect little perfume from the back porch in the morning on my way out the door.

The sun garden, where Mr. Earl resides. The flower immediately in your face here, lower left, is white phlox. I love it, but it blooms so late it just looks weedy now. That humongous grass to the right of Earl was a gift about two years ago from my friend Melisa. I love it ... but it probably needs to be thinned out. It gets to be about 9' tall!

The purple snake root, planted behind the ginger ale coral bells in the armillary garden are looking beautiful and standing tall!

And all of the stella doro lilies are blooming and looking beautiful and bright. I forgot how many of these guys I had planted at CDLV. They're such a wonderful garden staple in our zone (5), they are always blooming, and the color goes with anything.

And lastly, the rock garden, with that plant I had questions about. In the background you can see my beautiful wine barrel ring orb is still in the garden. And the pinks and light purples in the rock shade garden are starting to perk up and show off. And of course, my favorite ... begonias ... are planted here too. These do so well no matter where I plant them they're a must-have.

I know it was all wet, and it's not all blooming ... but it's coming along. I hope you enjoyed your little walk through the CDLV garden ... I'll have more progress, including the new roofs and porch paint, soon. Enjoy your weekend!

CDLV Garden Progress

Ok, so I had to do something to get the heat off that terrible sofa idea. My gosh, I didn't know you all loved the existing sofa so much. I love it too! I don't know what I was thinking ... chock it up to a temporary moment of insanity. Everything is back to normal.

In the garden however, things are growing ... but no blooms yet. Figured I'd show you a few things that are just about to open up ...

Adjacent to the circle garden, just off the back porch is Scott's lily garden. Here he's got every friggen' lily known to mankind planted. Ok, so that's a gross exaggeration ... but you get where I'm going with that, yes? My favorite are the tiger lilies, which are very tall and open up to be quite colorful. I'll show you when they open up ... but I think they're beautifully architectural just like they're shown here. Don't you?

In the center peninsula, I had to pull out just about all of the sun-loving plants since the trees have gotten so big. So, I replaced them with hydrangeas, and in the center, asiatic lilies that are so beautiful in pink and white. Can't wait to see them bloom!

I've since pulled the weed collar that was surrounding Earl, but I thought it made a pretty fun photo. As if having this big ole' head in the garden wasn't quirky enough, having a Shakespearean type collar of green just made me smile. The "pots" are chimney liners that we picked up from Buffalo Re-Use. I'm a fan of the look of terracotta in the garden. In fact, I only have concrete and terracotta planters. I always looked for height and couldn't find it, until of course, I saw these and repurposed them.

The roses have really started going bonkers! I'm so happy I cut them back to almost nothing. They seem to be pretty happy about it, too!

The climbing hydrangea is really starting to go bonkers. I didn't realize that it would look like this when blooming, I thought they flowers would be more like bush hydrangea, but I'm so happy with this firework like burst. So interesting.

I plan on getting out in the garden on Sunday and really busting out a lot of work. The roof progress (if you're following along on instagram) is supposed to finish up next weekend, so while they're up there getting their hands dirty - I'll be getting mine dirty in the garden ... and painting the porch! I'll share it with ya on Monday.

Spring CDLV Garden

Recently, Scott and I were asked to have the garden photographed for a local newspaper as part of a piece the reporter was doing for the Lifestyle Section regarding the many garden walks that take place in Western New York. I was quite hesitant because nothing in our yard blooms this time of year. Luckily, the alium and wild columbine came out to play just in time for me to snap this picture of the corner of the round garden.

When I started gardening back here 5-years ago, I never knew that it would turn out to be such a big garden, and also so much work. Just to get this photo, for example, I had to put down 28 bags of mulch, cut back all of the tulips (117) and daffodils (98) that were spent, and plant the chimney pots with pansy ... oh AND, dig out all of the area around the fountain to add the pea gravel path!

I'm tired, and sore, and it's still not the best representation of the CDLV garden. In a few days though, with all the groundwork (no pun intended) finished, the ornamental dogwood tree and peonies will bloom; and that round garden will be a burst of color and blooms. Which had me thinking ... perhaps now that I'm spending time out there, I should update all of you with the progress! What do you think? Good idea?

LOVE ... Fountains

The weather here simply can't make up its mind. A week of 80-degree weather at the end of March was frosted by snow just moments before the clock struck April 1st. We spent April Fools the brunt of Mother Nature's cruel joke, as icy rain pounded down on tender young plants that popped up weeks early from the greenhouse effect!

Hopefully I won't lose anything - but it has kept me from making some garden changes, one of which includes putting the fountain back into the round garden. I sorely missed the sound of water trickling in the garden last year.

P.S. Don't forget to enter the Cross Bottle giveaway at Karena's

http://artbykarena.blogspot.com



LOVE ... Philadelphia Flower Show - Part 2

Not everyone at the show followed the strict Hawaii theme, which was nice, since we don't live in Hawaii. Seeing displays that were easy to replicate in our climate zone was beautifully inspiring ... and had me googling azaleas on the car ride home. Enjoy:

TOTALLY replicating this in the Garden at CDLV this year!

LOVE ... Philadelphia International Flower Show - Part One

My first year to experience the Philadelphia Flower Show was last year, when the theme was everything Parisian, and the whole show felt like a walk through Parc Monceau. You can find pictures of that tour here: http://niagaranovice.blogspot.com/2011/03/tuesday-inspiring-spaces-at.html.
Last year we went on the final day of the show, and though it was amazing, you could tell that certain things were at the end of their peak. This year, we decided to show up on Day One - and while the show was amazing, there were so many people I could barely get good pictures of the displays. But I tried ...

This year, the theme was all Hawaii, and the main display was a beautiful thatched hut next to a 20' waterfall surrounded by thousands of orchids. Every hour on the hour they had Hawaiian dancers on stage while a voice-over narrative played about the Island legends of how the many islands of Hawaii were formed.

I told you there was a crowd. We got there at around 10:30, thinking we'd have no problem getting in and getting great pictures to share with all of our readers too far to experience for themselves. Unfortunately, others must have had the same idea. Not only was I squished against the Banana Palm display to get this picture, the camera (and I) was constantly shoved out of the way while wheelchairs, strollers, and all sorts of people pushed their way through and onward to the next display.

Please note, this was disappointing, but worth the experience of seeing this extremely well planned and orchestrated show.

The Philadelphia International Flower show is a judged show, with several different competitions in exhibit form throughout the convention center. One of the exhibits was "Store Fronts" and a few were REALLY incredible:

An exhibitor from last year was there again, this time with what I thought was a much larger exhibit that really showed off the idea of an urban garden in its finest form:

I took over 360 photos in the 3-hours we spent at the Flower Show, and it still amazes me at how few actually came out blog worthy. Something about the lighting and constant bumping just made this impossible.

While I search for more pictures to share with you tomorrow - enjoy these, and let me know if you have gone, or plan on going to the show. What did you think?