Got some suggestions for the succulents. Apparently the spotted one is a Manfreda, possibly (Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips').

The tall one might be Kalanchoe (Kalanchoe luciae) or Paddle Plant (Kalanchoe luciae subsp. luciae).

The bottom one is a sedum of some kind. :-)

Found a Black Swallowtail Caterpillar on my parsley this morning!



He has been safely moved inside into a mason jar with lots of parsley. I really need to get one of those caterpillar rearing cages.

I love all the different Japanese Morning Glories because most of them stay open all day.

Roses, your morning glory is beautiful!

Hi folks, well, I have some pictures to share.

I moved here in mid April this year (worst time to get into a new garden, if you ask me but so it goes!) and didn't really get moving here until maybe July?

I have more plans than I have results, in other words. My cousin has done a lot here and she is too busy to really keep up with things. Added to the fact that a huge tree came down a year or two ago and changed things greatly, removing any shade from one side of the yard.

This is that side, in full sun:




That far end of the bed, offscreen in that shot, was empty and sandy and had some scraggly violets and (still there) a few iris that did poorly, lots of grass... and a fig start next to a dragon statuette, LOL!

I've reclaimed it for herbs and we have a large patch of coreopsis starting there, most from seed. The iris will eventually be moved as will the one daylily (a Stella d'Oro).






(I didn't get most of the herbs in that shot, I have parsley and oregano a bit further along that are doing beautifully. You can just see the little fig leaves behind the dragon's head.)

Here, you can see the top of the sunny bed:




The large shrub is something my cousin calls a sweetbush and it offers some shade for some things that don't like full blaring sun all the time. We have a lot of coneflowers and blackeyed susans, and lots of things are getting moved around! The whole area around the old clothesline pole is destined to be made into a bed -- it's bigger than it looks from this picture.

Here is some of the area being shaded by the sweetbush:



I call this "Hannah's corner" because Hannah is the neighbor on that side. Previously this area was filled with devilvine, ivy, and other unwanted plants, and my cousin had been in the habit of putting cardboard down to discourage the weediness but then just pretty much leaving it there -- so it was unsightly.

Just outside the frame is a lovely pink rose. I have freed an area around the rose from ivy, which grows all along Hannah's fence to the street, and pruned it a little. In the right of the frame is a patch of creeping jenny that I intend to be a sort of mother plant from which I've already taken a few plugs for elsewhere around. Also in the corner under the bright prayer flags (which were a gift to me from the other side neighbors and which brighten that corner up so well) are two ferns, one a Japanese Painted Fern and the other a variety I don't know, as well as a patch of chocolate mint! Uncontained! Because I want something that will spread there! So far it is behaving itself more than I hoped.

To the left of this as you look at it is a spot where I want to try to grow some hardy ginger lily.

This is further to the left of Hannah's corner and is in almost full sun. Here I have my groundcover test patch. I am trying a number of varieties to see which work best. These are all groundcovers which can take a fair amount of foot traffic.

Previously this strange little spot was nothing but dirt and a few brave grass plants but even grass didn't like it there much.



And here is the Green Man bed, in front of the old garage that serves as a garden shed:



This had only the two peonies, no mulch, no nuthin'. Under the stones on the left is a planting of bulbs I dug up when I was clearing out Hannah's corner. Not sure what they are, probably crocus and maybe a tulip or two. Other bulbs also went into this bed, in front of the center column are some tulips and at the right side in front, some daffodils. All of those were dug up in the sun bed, during major weeding stages. The iris are from the sun bed too, where they were crowded in with all sorts of stuff, trees and weeds and blackeyed susans and liriope and a bunch of orange ditchlilies (which are replanted, in part, on the left side of the Green Man bed.) These iris are stunning gorgeous, a deep purple/blue that is almost black. I think the contrast of those with the orange daylilies is wonderful, and have repeated some replanting in front of the fence, between Hannah's corner and the groundcover nursery. There's a curved area there where they are now set out.

And finally (for now) this is my "potting bench" Heehee!

It looks beautiful, Kyla! You've done an amazing amount since April. :-)

I love all the coneflowers, Rudbeckia, and coreopsis. Also the herbs! Looks like you will attract some nice pollinators!

Thank you! Looking through this thread reminds me of all I want to do and plant. I would love to have some crocosmia, and I must get some Asclepias going. I hope to create a haven for pollinators and butterflies. There have been tiny wasps or bees all over that red flowered coreopsis. I'm going to have a coneflower forest upby the sweetbush, where a larger fig was taken out and moved the other day. I dug up about ten starts; they're in a pot waiting for me to plug them back in the soil.

To me, it looks more like the work in progress that it is, than anything to show off yet, but people have started saying nice things. Hannah, whom I mentioned, has thanked me a couple of times for making it look so nice.

Wait til next year, I want to say.

Ah, so many plans, LOL!

And, the photos in the thread before I posted are all so beautiful, very nice to see.

I love the idea of a coneflower forest, Kyla! I was out today visiting a friend who has a huge stand of Joe Pye weed, Solidago, and Mountain Mint near her house. Had so much fun watching all the pollinators that were attracted to it. *Lots* of Tiger Swallowtails.


Then we went to a favorite nursery and the Echinacea there was crawling with Skippers! Then a Fritillary came by and he and the Skippers were my guide to the best nectar in the house. ;-)


The White Coneflower and the Echinacea 'Magnus' were definite favorites, so in my cart they went!

Also enjoyed a couple more pollinators back at the homestead:


Anyway, I had a great time this weekend and it gave me lots of ideas for plants to focus on more next year. I think Echinacea will definitely be in the mix!

I'm sure the transformation will be beautiful Kyla. We always enjoy pictures of the progress being made in the gardens. Keep us posted with yours!!

hi, Roses. How're preparations going for the party?

Good morning!

Catmint, I so enjoy your photos. The "coneflower forest" is not going to be very large at first, I am calling ita forest to encourage it. :D

I only have the purpurea but recently was given seeds for v. PowWow, which has red petals and is shorter -- haven't done anything with them yet.

But the same person -- a local garden center owner -- gave us seeds of that orange cosmos that is perennial and I did sow them in the ground, or some of them, and boy did they ever sprout! I'm going to lift up a few seedlings and pot them up, I think.

Rose, what party? A garden party?

I'm just popping in to say good morning; I'm going outside for a few hours and will check back with y'all after a while.




(that was a dill forest in a pot in my previous garden.)

I'm having an annual Family and Friends party on August 23rd. I will have house guests from tomorrow until August 27th. I used evite.com to get the invitation and responses out. It's a great program that keeps track of who received the invites, who opened their e mail with the invite and then it lists all the "yes", "no", and "maybe" responses. You can also comment and send messages thru the program. It's great and saves lots of time;. So far we have 50 "yes" responses.

thanks, Kyla! After my field trips this weekend, I've been dreaming of a forest of Coneflowers and Joe Pye weed! 'Powwow''--that should be very pretty. The white one I got this weekend is 'Happy Star'. (Don't you just love all the cultivar names they come up with? Wouldn't that be quite the job--naming cultivars?? )

I love my orange cosmos (C. sulphureus)! Such a nice bright spot of color, and the pollinators love it, too. Not hardy here, but I love it anyway! I'm planning on using more cosmos next year.

Love that dill!

I grew that Pow Wow Berry from seed one year. Most of the cultivars that I have now can't be grown from seed (I think I read this somewhere).

Teri, I've heard of evite and even gotten one or two in the past. Fifty sounds like a respectable sized group! Are you expecting many more than that when all is said and done? And houseguests for weeks too. I'm impressed; I could never manage such a thing. Too much of a loner. If you do it every year, you've probably got it all well under control, and I bet it will go beautifully!

Catmint, welp, the owner of this garden center where I got those orange cosmos seeds called it a perennial. And you and I are in the same zone. So, I wonder! I guess, if it self sows all that successfully, one might not know in a whole bed ofthe stuff whether it's perennial or not. Or perhaps there is more than one bright orange cosmos?

Anyway, I am delighted to be growing it. One thing I was going to do this morning was lift up a few seedlings and pot them up to put elsewhere, later. Didn't get to that though. I planted a little crowd of coneflower starts and a few more iris that had been dug up. In the process of doing that Ihad to dig out a little tree that had grown into the chain link fence. It had been cut down a couple times and was about as thick as -- no, a little thicker than my thumb. That was hard, and I did end up having to cut off the root. But between the chain link fence and the poor little hydrangea right on the other side of the fence, it was just too hard to get any deeper down in there than I got!

That all wore me out for the day's gardening.

Later, my book came -- I ordered a used copy of The Well-Tended Perennial Garden and so glad to have it! And also a packet with some seeds I ordered from Seed SAvers Exchange, and I haven't even opened that yet because then I got up with a friend here who had a whole bundle of seeds for me -- stuff she isn't going to do anything with. And I haven't looked through those yet either.

Today was one of those days when everything seems to want to happen at once.

But while I was at her house -- her garden is very badly overgrown, a real jungle, she has had health issues for a while -- I saw my first Monarch of the year, first I've seen in a long while. That was special.

Roses, I love evite, too! Makes things so much easier! Wow, 50 guests! Sounds like it will be quite a shindig!

Kyla that is a good point about self-seeding. C. sulphureus is definitely a perennial--just a tender one around here. Maybe C. bipinnatus is a true annual? Or maybe there is another bright orange cosmos! If so, I need to know about it, so I can plant it!!

Sounds like quite a day's work, especially with trying to dig up a tree around a chain link fence! I'd be tired, too!

Let us know how your new book is! I always love it when I get a new gardening book. The book I ordered most recently was a field guide to butterflies in Loudoun County, VA--figuring I am close enough to Loudoun County for the book to be applicable to me, too! Anyway, so much fun to look through the photos and read the info.

What new seeds did you get?

Sounds like a fine day! Especially that Monarch!!

Oh my gracious mercy me, what seeds did I get? Well, this friend has been saving some things for a while, some of these are in packages packed for 1999. They've been carefully stored so I expect some if not most will still be viable. Others are from 2006 and some from 2009. There are many varieties of sunflower (yes!) and a couple packs of cosmos, one a mix of the usual pink and purple, and one a white variety. There is a packet of lavender seeds. (L. angustifolia) Some white nicotiana, some Argostemma (corn cockle --I'd seen it I think but didn't know about it much), some ipomopsis -- new to me, looks wonderful (TX wildflower, hummingbird plant). Uh, what else? Some Sweet Annie -- an annual Artemesia used in wreaths and herbally as a cancer remedy! Oh, other things I've forgotten now. I just sorted through all those and grouped them for what I want to try now and what I'll hang on to.

Oh there was a pack of Asclepias -- forget which one.

And this is without even opening the ones that came in the mail. I forget which group that is, I've ordered seeds from a couple of places and not sure which these are until I look. I am going to sow some kale so that's probably in there....

If my body holds up, I'm gonna have a garden, by dinkum!

I remember getting into an argument on DG once, about perennials and annuals, because I said I thought those were mostly human designations and plants themselves don't really fall into such neat categories. I said it more eloquently then of course -- and someone took great issue with my assertion!

Roses_R_Red said:I grew that Pow Wow Berry from seed one year. Most of the cultivars that I have now can't be grown from seed (I think I read this somewhere).

That's a good point about the newer cultivars, Teri. And then there are the newer Echinacea cultivars that the pollinators don't even like. I have 2 of them--Raspberry Truffle and Secret Affair. Both very pretty, but the pollinators sniff at them and move on quickly. I think the nectar isn't accessible to them. And then of course the plants that are sterile.