Before You Garden…

English gardener transplanted into American soil

Posts tagged garden

The Ultimate Flower Gardener’s Guide

By JennyRoseCarey on 2022-06-24

Unfurling and Uncurling -Spring growth

By JennyRoseCarey on 2016-04-04

Welcome spring – trees breaking bud

By JennyRoseCarey on 2016-03-20

More Witch Hazels for winter into spring bloom

By JennyRoseCarey on 2016-02-29

Snowy details in the garden

By JennyRoseCarey on 2015-01-11

Maple trees glistening with ice – beautiful to look at but a hazard to power lines.

By JennyRoseCarey on 2014-02-09

Dahlia ‘Gitts Crazy’

By JennyRoseCarey on 2013-09-16

Dahlia – ‘Encore’

By JennyRoseCarey on 2013-09-16

Underneath a pink zinnia flower

By JennyRoseCarey on 2013-08-29

Ripe Tomatoes

By JennyRoseCarey on 2013-07-31

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What a surprise! I found my new book for sale at Ladew Topiary Gardens shop. It is not even really released yet but there it was. So of course I signed them. I did ask first. It’s out there in the real world. 🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Rose Campion or Lychnis coronaria is an underused biennial plant that acts as a great mixer in a flower bed. Often self-sowing where the seeds get washed by rain to the front of a bed, in gravel or by a stone. This sequence of 9 photos and a short video at the end shows the whole picture. First Angels Blush with a pinkish center, then bright magenta, and white. Fourth the basal silvery foliage that looks like lambs ears. This has to overwinter and then flowers next year. I dug up lots of these baby plants from the gravel and between the paving slabs to replant elsewhere in the garden. Rose campion looks good with blue larkspur, pink poppies, or allium seed heads. The final video shows the whole bed. Enjoy. If you liked this post please share it and get ready for my new book coming out for Timber Press called The Ultimate Flower Gardener’s Guide. Available wherever gardening books are sold. Pre-order now. Thank you for your continued support.

First sweetpea flower of the season with blue star-shaped borage flowers behind - see second photo. Lovely combination of cool season annuals that I will enjoy for as long as I can.

Poppilicious poppy parade. Thanks to an Instagram follower for telling me about this great word! This is a selection of poppies in the garden today and over the last couple of days. The differences are sometimes subtle but none the less fascinating. Nine photos and one short video with birdsong

My favorite shot from yesterday at Sissinghurst Castle Garden. An open gate tempting you to continue your garden exploration. Taken from the newly redesigned garden of Delos. Troy Scott Smith @troyscottsmith1 and Dan Pearson @danpearsonstudio

Great day for a visit to Great Dixter. So wonderful to see great plant combinations and atmospheric gardens. Thanks to @fergusgarrett for lunch.

Back to visiting gardens for more inspiration for my garden writing and garden design. Here at RHS garden Wisley - Wisteria arch in bloom underplanted with Allium

Beautiful, sunny, windy day. Stonehenge - many visits over the years including on on a long ago summer solstice - with 250,000 other ‘hippies’! Great to be back this side of the pond.

A Columbine collection - 10 varied flowers. I let the bees get to work and cross my columbines to get lovely- and sometimes surprising results. These are some of the hybrid ones that are in bloom now - see earlier post for our native East coast Aquilegia canadensis. I sprinkle the ripe seed around the garden and they germinate in place - especially in gravel - path or bed.

So honored and excited to receive the Letitia Glenn Biddle award at a garden party at the Andalusia Estate and Garden. A rainy, chilly day did not deter the revelers who had a merry time amongst the spring blooms. Go and visit if you are in the Philadelphia area. Check website for all the visiting times and other information. Thank you to the team at Andalusia for a lovely evening and for this fantastic honor

So grateful to see a little sun at the end of the day - following 3 inches of rain. A little corner of Northview Garden for all the mothers and mother figures who have made a difference in our lives - happy Mother’s Day

Self-sown columbine that sowed itself into a gravel area. Photo taken a couple of days ago in sunshine. The flower is such a lovely complex bell-shaped flower. Today it rained all day and there was no sign of the sun. I know that showers bring flowers but I think that I am done with showers!

Daffodil season is still going! Narcissus poeticus recurvus is one of the latest. This elegant flower with swept back petals and a central red-rimmed center. Here it is backlit and planted in grass - in my stinze planting.

Winter Walk with a carpet of crabapple petals on the path. Celebrate the subtle beauties of each garden moment. Those of you who saw the winter reel of this same area of the garden / compare to the snowy photos. Thank goodness that the snow has gone.

Fritillaries are perfect to add drama and height to a lackluster spring garden. This is a selection - 10 photos- of the ones that are in bloom right now in early May in the mid Atlantic. I have had others in bloom for about a month. They share the dangling bell-shaped flower but vary in coloration. With a preponderance of dusky plums, olive greens, and soft yellows. Order early for fall planting and they will add delight to your garden next spring

Friday flowers - an arrangement from the garden today. Lots of small-scale flowers to suit the little copper lustreware jug - including violas, pulmonaria, corylopsis fresh foliage, Jacob”s Ladder, Leucojum, daffodils Sundisc and Hawera, Ipheion, and Sweet Woodruff. Late sunlight on a reflective surface with the window reflection and redbud tree outside.

Aquilegia canadensis- East Coast native wild columbine at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve- glowing in late day light. Easy to grow and a favorite of hummingbirds. They should be migrating through soon if the weather warms up! .

Not all flowers can be the stars of the flower garden - but what each individual flower of the Golden Alyssum or Basket of Gold - Aurinia saxatilis- lacks in size it makes up for with the zingy yellow color and the clustering together of the blooms. Second photo shows how I use these flowers in between clumps of ‘Rapture’ daffodils to disguise the foliage as it dies down and to keep the yellow theme in this bed going for longer. There is a reel from earlier this year that shows the daffodils.

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