How is your garden looking today?

Well that seems to have caused a torrent of apathy.

I'm not apathetic, I don't know what to say. I've designed hundreds of gardens, many circumstances. Yours makes you joyous. That is the thing. Garden design varies, that is part of the wonder, including varying with yourself over time.

My own is now poorly worked as I can't really do it any more.


Torrent of apathy?

Don't take anything too personally, Osso, there's more than just you and I here.
I suppose? But maybe not.

My "garden design" involves fighting back the weeds with whatever comes to hand.

I am amazed by how you managed to make your garden look so mature in only six years! It's great. I must admit I am a little envious - I used to spend every spare minute in the garden, but having been unable to walk for some years, our garden grew into a wilderness.

Last year I decided to take drastic action. With my husband's help (he hates gardening), I managed to chop down and dig up everything (except for half a dozen trees) in the back garden. It took the whole summer! We had to hire two large skips to get rid of tree trunks, roots, old pond liners, and rocks from the two rock gardens that had taken up a large part of the 40' x 40' space. After that, we put down a weed suppressing membrane on all of the borders, and covered it with chipped bark.

Our final act was to put a couple of dozen containers around the borders. Never having grown plants in containers before, it was all a bit hit and miss, so I put in a fairly large variety. Quite surprised that all but two managed to survive our harsh winter and cold spring. The lawn is still in pretty poor condition - dogs, compaction on clay soil, and general neglect, have meant that the grass is a bit sparse - but we couldn't manage to do much to it last year - and for health reasons, I haven't been out there much this year. But next year ....

I manage to get round on a wheeled garden seat, or with a walker/rollator - a bit comical at times, but ... I'll try and post some photos at some point if you're interested. Meantime, please do tell more about your garden - I love to read it and see photos.

Here is spring season and my garden is looking lush and i have many colorful flowers in it so the smell is also awesome in surrounding.

At RHS Tatton garden show last year I ordered some gladioli. They came about March, but I wasn't ready to put them in until June. They're just coming into flower now, and if we get a bit more of an Indian summer, they may delight us by reaching their full potential.

Gorgeous, glads are one of my most favorite flowers. I like how you commingled them among the other plants.

Would love to see them when the whole spike is in full bloom.

McTag, absolutely breath taking garden. As neco knows, this is all that I have.

All you have? Letty, it's beautiful. What a wonderful colour the blossoms are.

More glads are out, and indeed they're on borrowed time as the weather changes.
I'll post some more pics soon.

The glads are beautiful, as is your garden generally.

Here's a corner of my garden, as referred to in an earlier post - we've just levelled the lawn, and re-seeded it, to make it easier for my wheeled garden seat to move across it.

Liked that bench with its accompanying ornamentation (makes me remember and miss a concrete dog cast that was stolen from my front porch, grrrrrr), and all the growing things around it.

The garden has been constantly evolving since last year - it had grown into a wilderness during my years of being bedridden, so it was a nasty shock when I saw how bad it was - I decided the wilderness had to go! Hence the containers. Easier for me to cope with, although I miss growing things 'au naturel'. I still do that in the front garden - mostly lavender, fuschia, potentilla - cottage garden type plants out there, plus several more large containers.

The stone bench is my pride and joy - but not as comfortable as the wooden benches - they are there to give me something to collapse onto when I walk to 40' across the lawn - a long way for me! The box plants surrounding the stone bench were a bit shaggy when I took that photo a few weeks ago - managed to prune them successfully since then -my first attempts at topiary!

Are you going to post some photos of your gardens, past and present? I'd love to see them - might give me some ideas - I'm still such an amateur!

I probably will but I need to do some heavy (to me) work scanning my painting photos and getting them on a site where I can have some relatively local galleries see them. Kind of daunting to me but important to do. A lot of my photo posting on here is another effort at avoidance re the painting photos. I've mumbled about doing this for years, but I have serious need to de-access.

These pictures were taken yesterday

Well, I thought they were nice anyway.

They are beautiful - love the red especially. Are they difficult to grow?

No, they're from bulbs, just stick 'em in and stand back.
They need canes for support when they get tall. (Five foot?)
A sheltered, sunny spot is good.

A bit too tall for our front garden, which is where I was thinking of putting them, but I'd like to introduce that shade of orange/red into the border underneath the window - must try and think of something else. Might try dahlias - had them a long time ago, and they were pretty spectacular.

Try some lovely green foliage cover, with the odd "Bishop of Llandaff" dahlia dotted in amongst. Looks stunning on a sunny day, and even better when it's dull and overcast!