the garden club.

Published on by Quandie

I mentioned a while back that my neighbor across the street, nnK, won the Acorn Award this year.  The Acorn Award is our city’s award for landscaping that goes ‘above and beyond’ normal standards.  After nnK won the award, the garden club contacted her and asked if they could plan a time to tour her garden (I shared nnK’s pond garden here).  They also asked if they could tour my garden while they were in the neighborhood.

Unfortunately the date they had available for a visit was this past Monday which was definitely not the best time to visit my gardens.  I’ve mentioned in the past that I usually throw in the towel on gardening by mid-August.  The weeds begin to take over, I’ve usually got a fair amount of Asian beetle damage by now, and inevitably I have some (or in the case of this year, lots of) hail damage.  The Ostrich ferns start to die back in August and the prettiest perennials, such as the peonies and lilacs, are long past blooming.

But mid-August was what worked for the garden club schedule, so I made a little last ditch effort to spruce things up a bit for their visit.

The fact that the hydrangeas are blooming helped quite a bit.

And the annuals in my planters added a bit of color.

I planted New Guinea impatiens and fuchsias in my front window box this year and they are going gang busters.  I’ll plant them again next year.

I think the fairy garden was a big hit.

If you haven’t seen it before, my fairy garden is planted in an old concrete bird bath that is cracked so it won’t hold water anymore.  That makes it perfect for planting because it allows for drainage.

My bright green/yellow lamium has finally taken off after a very slow start this spring and luckily my concrete rabbit doesn’t eat much (you can see some of that hail damage on the hosta on the upper left side of the photo).

I love this stuff for adding a bright spot in a shady garden.

My statue, Cossetta, was a garage sale find.  I think some of the garden club members found her tiara amusing.

But hey, what girl doesn’t want to wear a tiara now and then?

Even though the Ostrich ferns in my fern garden were mostly brown, the Japanese painted ferns still look good.

As did the Maiden Hair ferns.

I feel like the summer is just slipping away from me again this year.  Fall is right around the corner, and this is probably the garden’s last hurrah so it was fun to share it with both the garden club and you guys.

My sister and I are off to Oronoco Gold Rush bright and early tomorrow morning.  Hopefully we’ll find some fun vintage goodies that I can share with you next week.  Fingers crossed!

21 thoughts on “the garden club.”

  1. Your yard is beautiful. It looks lush and green. Everything in my yard looks sad and dry this time of year. I know what you mean about the Japanese beetles, they’ve eaten almost an entire weeping pussy willow tree my husband planted for me this spring. Also, I love your bird bath turned fairy garden. Any chance you would share what plants you used in it?

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    1. Those beetles are horrible! I ended up pulling out a weeping cherry tree (it was small) because they loved it so much. It was impossible to keep it looking good and it was right next to the dining table on our deck, yuck. As for the plants in the fairy garden, the big solid green (right side of pic) is a mini hosta. Unfortunately I can’t remember which one. The low creeper in front of it is a creeping thyme. The two little variegated plants near the mini bird bath are also both mini hostas (again, can’t remember their names, but look here, you can order one from Walmart for $4.99). The plants with the round leaves and the sort of grey veining are a wild miniature violet. I have no idea where that plant came from, it just started growing in the cracks on my flagstone patio, so I moved some into the fairy garden and it looks perfect in there. I bury the fairy garden under a pile of leaves up close to the house in the winter, and so far my hostas (and a mini evergreen tree that you can’t see in the photos) have come back every year.

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  2. Oh- It looks great–your garden is just beautiful and full of unexpected surprises. You did a fantastic job and I bet the people that toured were thrilled that they got to see it. I am going to go check out the post about your neighbor’s yard. Have a great weekend. xo Diana

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  4. I have hosta envy big time hosta envy. Your garden is beautiful Linda.
    Your window boxes are too. Can’t even imagine a garden tour in August.

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    1. We’ve had plenty of rain here this summer, so I think that helped keep the garden presentable into August. I think I only had the sprinklers out once this year!

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    1. You’re welcome Jacqueline. I think like most people, my eye goes right to the flaws in my space … such as all of the creeping charlie in the lawn and my ugly red roof (why, oh why, didn’t I choose a different color when we had the roof re-shingled all those years ago?) so thank you for reminding me that not everyone ‘sees’ those things!

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  7. Your garden always looks good…too bad you aren’t eligible for the Acorn Awaed…you would win it in a minute. Nice that the garden Club came out and I’ll bet they got some great ideas.

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