How does the garden grow: a photo essay of my backyard May 7th 2009

I was out feeding the critters and the sight of my blooming rose bush caught my attention. I wanted to take some time to photograph the yard of our new place and to explain each photo a bit for those of you who were interested in seeing how it is all looking.

Here is the view to the left just as you enter our gated yard. There is a perennial bed filled with mums, hydrangea, creeping virginia, day lilies, peonies, oriental lilies and a few other unknown bushes.

Dixie (the dog) likes to lay and dig in the bed so we have placed pots over all the empty spaces in the bed, it discourages her from getting in there. Sure it looks odd but it will be fine until we are able to buy some garden fencing to keep her out of there.

Then we have the wall to wall wood deck just beyond our front door. It is still cluttered with stuff, we aren’t even close to being totally moved in to the new place yet. We are taking it slow.

Beyond the deck is more garden beds and a lawn.

This is our front door that is in the back yard… I guess technically it is a back door then huh? We have no front door then… Allow me to illustrate.

Here is a look out our gate at the street we live on:

The gate is the only way to enter the house, unless you open the garage door and come in through the garage.

Here is the path from the gate to our front door.

I guess the good thing about having your “front door” behind your back gate is that the dog keeps unwanted visitors away. Don’t need a no soliciting sign but it does make package delivery difficult.

Okay, so here are some shots of the plants we have growing right now:

In the pots we have lambs ear and garlic growing. In the ground you see day lilies and a few tiny peonies.

Here you see some mums, a potted coral bells plant and some virginia creeper filling the space.

Here you can see more mums and virginia creeper but in the upper right hand corner you will see hydrangeas. I am super stoked to have hydrangea growing in the bed. They are such pretty bloomers! Just below the hydrangea is a potted stone crop plant.

I transplanted some of this purple ground cover. Not sure what the name of it is but it produces some pretty purple stalks of flower and spreads quickly.

I am actually not sure what this bush is, have any idea? It was already planted when we moved in.

Here is a full photo of the garden bed:

Then there is my lazy doggie:

Just beyond the deck to the right there is a rose/ berry bush bed. You can see it in this photo. That is our outside cat, Hailey, hanging out in the grass there in case you were wondering.

Here is a close up shot of the rose bush.

Then there is potted yarrow right next to the rose bed. It was a native plant of Flagstaff, AZ that we loved. It made the cross country trek with us when we moved.

We brought this potted geranium along with us when we made the move too. It has the most vivid bluish/ purple flowers and is super cold hardy! N also got me some pink geranium and some dark purple that I’ve also planted in the pot with the existing geranium.

I just expended one of the garden beds out by our back fence. It is pretty swampy out there and I ended up getting some flag iris’ off freecycle which love the moisture. I also got some toad lilies from N for my birthday that also have high moisture needs so I made a little “high moisture bed” out there for these guys. Here is what it looks like.