What I Saw On The Secret Garden Tour

There were some very clever containers on the Secret Garden Tour this year.  I’m borrowing lots of these ideas for my garden next year.

Corn in a pig planter.  Charming, whimsical, and clever all rolled into one.  There was quite the pig theme going on at this stop.

Same stop, not 15 feet away was this gem.  So different from the piggy-in-the-corn, and yet it all worked.  I don’t have the slightest idea what the plantings are here, the tall feathery one in the back looks like dill, or cosmos.  If you know please chime in here!

Elephant Ear, and something that looks like it could be alternathera, maybe purple knight?  Very bold, just demands to be looked at.  Love the limey color with the purple.

Look to the right, more corn!  And yes, more pigs.

Very nice one color container, that’s a caladium & a clematis.  Maybe the common woodland clematis?  I really have to ask more questions next year.  The problem is the actual gardeners aren’t always around, would you stay with a couple hundred people traipsing through your garden?  I’ve rarely had any luck asking the club members about the plantings.

Great color for the shade garden.  And it’s doable too.  Easy plants to find at your local garden center.  In a couple more weeks it will be fetching as the plants fill out and over flow the container.  Unusual container too, and nice the way they lifted it up off the ground, to give it some height.

Huge, but simple planting of impatients on a column of bee boxes! (what’s the proper name for those boxes anyway?)

Completely over the top.  Giant birdbath, or fountain?  I’m not certain but I love the boldness here.  Everyone took one look and went “wow”.

First Lily (day) of the Season

Happy Returns the cutest little day lily of them all.  First bloom peeked out yesterday and from the look of the many buds this will be a good year for her.  I transplanted these from the very shady neglected backyard to the somewhat more sunny front yard, last year.  It’s actually growing rather than surviving, and I get to see it everytime I go in and out.  Brings a smile to this gardeners face.

I lifted this from the American Hemerocallis Society’s page.  Do you think their members carry cards announcing as much?  Anyhoo I found it interesting.  My daughter’s pet peeve is people (her mom?) who spell lilly with two L’s.  The  AHS people are very clear that daylily is indeed one word.  Just in case you’ve been losing sleep over this matter.

The scientific name for daylily is Hemerocallis, most recently considered to belong in the plant family Hemerocallidaceae. Previously, many older works placed daylilies in the Lily family, Liliaceae. Notice that the preferred spelling is “daylily” as one word. Many dictionaries spell it as two words. The word Hemerocallis is derived from two Greek words meaning “beauty” and “day,” referring to the fact that each flower lasts only one day. To make up for this, there are many flower buds on each daylily flower stalk, and many stalks in each clump of plants, so, the flowering period of a clump is usually several weeks long. And, many cultivars have more than one flowering period.