Greetings! I thought I should post at least once more before the end of the gardening season, now that Autumn is upon us. It's been a pretty nice autumn. Our first frost is usually around October 15th, and sure enough, this year's first frost happened the night of October 16th, and we've had a few more since then. But they've all been light frosts, so some flowers have persisted in continuing to bloom. Like the nasturtium ("nasty urchins") in the above photo in my Paradise Garden. It's a variegated type, Burpee's 'Alaska Mix' I think. It took forever to grow and flower--I planted the ..read more

  Hello! My gardens looked pretty nice during early June this year: we had significant rain nearly every week during May, so the lawns have looked lush and green, and the annual flowers I planted have become established. But the main stars have been my roses, and the self-seeded cool-season annuals that have looked great this year: the snapdragons, oxeye daisies, and in particular, the numerous bachelor buttons or cornflowers that have filled in empty spots with a blue haze of lovely little flowers. The roses have bloomed beautifully this year. I've been sprinkling All-In-One Ro ..read more

  Greetings! I cannot believe that it's already mid-June in 2024--where has the year gone? I took pictures of my gardens intending to write a post in spring, but I got distracted finishing some writing projects and then working in the gardens, and ended up putting off posting until now. I'll show a few highlights from this year in two posts: this one will show some scenes from winter and spring. Then I'll make another post for summer to date. Heap Big Snow This past winter really wasn't bad as far as Iowa winters go--with the exception of one horrendously big snow and unusually cold te ..read more

  Our new front porch! Greetings! It's been a busy fall and I'm only now able to post about the three projects I've been working on this autumn (now that winter is pretty much here!).  But I wanted to post one last time before winter. Here's what I've been doing: 1. Plant Moving In September I did my first project: moving plants out of my long Rainbow Border, which I'm eliminating, as I mentioned in my post earlier this year. I planted many of these in front of the addition on the west side of our house. Going, going.... The Rainbow Border didn't look too bad this ye ..read more

  Greetings to my fellow gardeners. I just don't know where the summer went! Apparently the last time I posted here was back in May.... But I recently had a chance to take a few snapshots of my gardens right before dusk (which arrives much earlier now). In May, I was working on my new garden area, which I've been calling the Triangle Garden, or sometimes the Diagonal Garden: The Triangle/Diagonal Garden back in May before planting As you can see in the top photo, the new garden has come along well since then. I planted three groups of stripey cannas in each bed, as well as a c ..read more

  Greetings! I'd like to share with you my new garden project, which I've been thinking about doing for some time now. (I apologize for the long post.) I've noticed for some years now that I enjoy the gardens that are closer to my house much more than those areas that are farther away or located in places where I rarely see them. This makes sense, of course, and not just because I'm able to enjoy them more often because they're closer. Also, I remember to maintain them, which is much easier when they're right outside my door, and so they are more successful garden areas -- which are mu ..read more

  Greetings after a long winter! Somehow it's already May, and it seems like most of Spring has snuck by me. There were some nice days in April, but also some stretches of cold, wet, windy days, so I've done very little in my gardens until recently. But it certainly seems like I've been busy all winter -- a quick update on what I've been up to:  My retail store was destroyed in early October, and finding and remodeling a new space, re-ordering all the inventory and furnishings, and getting going again was incredibly time-consuming through February (I'm still dealing with the insur ..read more

Greetings! Readers of my blog have probably noticed that I have many, many boxwood shrubs -- several hundred -- in my various garden areas. The most prominent boxwood planting is my Herb Garden, shown above in a photo taken three years ago. (This is one of my favorite pictures of my garden, because it shows my white picket fence, the formal Herb Garden, and the Iowa farm scenery beyond -- I feel the photo really captures the feeling of my gardens and their setting.) The Herb Garden was the first garden area I made when we moved out here in 2008. I had wanted to make a formal garden area f ..read more

  Greetings! Last weekend my husband, children and I visited my mother in Ames, Iowa, seeing her for the first time in nearly a year and a half. Now that she and most of my family have been fully vaccinated, she was eager to see us again after such a lonely Covid year spent completely by herself. It was so wonderful to finally see her in person again. While in Ames, I wanted to visit a peony collector there whom I've been corresponding with via email for the past few months, and I thought that my mother, a retired botanist, might also enjoy a visit to a beautiful garden owned by a fell ..read more

  Greetings! It's been a beautiful May here in Iowa. Last week was quite warm, but this week the nights have been unusually cool for this time of year, dipping down into the low 40s, and even frost last night -- definitely not time yet to plant out the tomatoes, pepper, zinnias and dahlia starts that are becoming so large in my sunroom that I'm starting to run out of room. But I think that might have been our last frost, and I hope that the nighttime temps will soon warm up a bit, so I can start moving things out of the sunroom for the summer and planting the Tropical Garden aroun ..read more