Truly My Garden

First of all I want to apologize for the how the wording is coming out on my blog. I spent a while typing everything up and only after I was finished did I check it. ARGGHHH! It doesn't justify and it looks completely normal, like a paragraph on my edit page  so hopefully it isn't to painful to read and I can get it right the next time. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
                                    SORRY!
                                                                         

We inherited a beautiful north facing backyard when we bought our home, complete with trees, shrubs and flowers planted by the late Millie Quibelle who's father owned and renovated our home in 1915 from a Gothic Revival 1 1/2 story home to a 2 1/2 story Queen Anne. Moving from a basement apartment to a home with a garden proved to be quite a challenge for me. I had never even so much as had an indoor plant in my previous abode and had to constantly bug our then neighbours behind us for all kinds of gardening tips (we didn't have a computer then to just google any question I had).

I still do not have a green thumb like my mother but I am doing ok I think.  What I try to do is keep it simple, plant those plants that need very little care and water! How can you go wrong with that?!

So a couple of years ago Todd dug out our south facing  front yard to the right of our flagstone sidewalk right down to the clay soil by hand  because it was his way of getting rid of the grubs that were infesting it. Since we were adding back good soil and sod we decided to make a nice new garden. We amended the soil on the other side of the sidewalk too to accept new plants.  I have seen many beautiful gardens in the shelter magazines but most were created my master gardeners, or people who hired master gardeners or retired gardeners who could spares days on end tending their gardens.

our not so lovely front yard when we first bought our home

then Todd added flagstone to the walkway and our first (weak) attempt
at a garden.

But one day I flipped through this wonderful UK Homes and Gardens magazine and just had to buy it

because it was full of inspiration and the colours and shapes reminded me of our front garden.

                              

            Easy to grow drought tolerant plants in shades of green, silver green, purple and hot pink

                                                           Gorgeous texture abounds.

                                                   Round shapes, purples and whites with touches of yellow.

      

                                         But this is the garden that just takes my breath away.

                      Huge round box woods, lavender, white peonies, yucca, blue and purple delphiniums.

     Funny thing is I had once planted delphiniums in our old garden and my brown thumb killed them.

                                                      I must try my hand at them again.

I also love the grey stones and wonder if we could incorporate some of that one day.

        

                So on a more modest scale I believe I have found my inspiration to finish our garden.

               We previously planted lavender, box wood, pinks, pin cushion, white coneflower and  limelight hydrangea.

I can't wait for the hydrangea to flower

This is how the hydrangea looked the first year we planted it. Limelight is such a hardy hydrangea to have if you are ever wanting a low maintenance one with big white flowers.

Sadly my english lavender on this side did not do well and so I have replanted with munstead lavender

                                           which is supposed to survive our winters better.

                                   For the life of me I cannot remember the name of this plant but the bees just love its flowers. 

I really adore those hot pink miniature pinks and must see if I can find some on sale. They are called an evergreen and so you are not supposed to cut them down in the fall otherwise you will not see flowers the next year. I haven't tried it but if you give them a hair cut with scissors just taking the spent flowers off it may give you a second round of flowers later on in the summer.

 I've always had luck with our Real Canadian Superstore for great prices and selection on plants.                                              

                                               I just planted historical soapwort (yes they used to make soap from it) which I loved for it's drought tolerant white flowers but now I learned it is very invasive and so it's not staying after all.

                            Last week I bought two of these succulent drought tolerant hot pink flowering stone 

                                                                  crop  that were  just $6.99 for a nice big size.

                  and some white flowering Shirley Temple  peonies. They were on sale for

                                             just $7.67 each  which seems like a deal to me.

     I've been at home under the weather the past two days and it has been raining amazon style rain but I can't        

                                                  wait to get them in the ground just as soon as I can.

                                      

  As this is mostly a summer flowering garden I hope to plant it full of purple, white and pink  tulips this  fall so it will look just as nice in the spring time as it does in the summer.

Well just maybe my thumb is turning a little bit green after all!