Category: garden.

Minnesota has what I consider to be the ideal climate for gardening.  You scoff, I know.  Especially those of you in more southerly climes.  But, let me explain.  Our growing season is pretty short.  We can’t plant our annuals until at least May 15, and this year it was even later.  Our average first frost is in late September.  That’s it.  Four and a half months.  That is about perfect for me.  By mid-August I am already growing bored with gardening and I’m ready to be done for the year.  Apparently my gardening attention span is really short as well.  It’s a perfect fit.

I am quite fine with letting my garden slumber under mountains of snow for half of the year.  It makes you appreciate it that much more when it is green and lovely.

Today I thought I would take you, dear reader, on a short tour of my garden.

The lilac above is part of a lilac hedge I am working on along my rear property line.  I put these in 3 years ago, and they are just starting to get nice and tall.  I need them to fill in a lot more though, so I’m hoping to prune them this year and encourage them to get bushier.

I garden mostly in the shade.  I have a lot of really large trees in my yard, which works well for me.  I much prefer shade, and not having central a/c in my house means the trees help us stay cooler inside.

My buddha was purchased at Home Goods a few years back.  He is holding up pretty well outside and has developed a nice patina.  He is nestled in with my Maidenhair Ferns.  I love these because they are so delicate and airy looking.

This is Cossetta.  I purchased her at a garage sale of course!  She seemed pricey in garage sale money at $80, but truly she was a bargain.  She is wearing her tiara and presiding over the hostas and bleeding hearts.

I just purchased this bleeding heart.  It has the bright chartreuse foliage that I love.  I don’t know the official name of it off the top of my head, but if anyone is wondering, leave me a comment and I’ll go read the tag.  As I was editing my photos for this post, it became apparent to me just how much I love bright lime green.

This is partly because I love the color, but also because these bright colors really pop in a shady garden.  If you look closely at these photos, you can see that I use Cocoa Bean mulch in my gardens.  I like how dark it gets, which also makes my bright green foliage stand out.  It can get moldy in damp weather though, which can be slightly unpleasant.

I focus much more on foliage than I do on flowers.  Most perennials have such a short blooming season, so I pick plants for their foliage so they look good all summer.  Of course, I do have some favorite blooms too, like peonies, hydrangeas and irises … none of which are blooming quite yet.  I have a cutting garden out behind the carriage house that is full of these.  When they bloom, I don’t feel guilty cutting and bringing them inside because that’s what they’re there for!

The foamflower is blooming now though.

My sedum is gradually taking over my patio.  I planted it to spill over the garden edge, and it is definitely spilling.

This gargoyle is guarding the brunnera.  I love the delicate blue flowers on this plant.  Too bad they are nearly done for the season already.  This is supposed to be Brunnera Jack Frost.  If any of you know plants, you are now wondering why this doesn’t look like Jack Frost.  Turns out you are supposed to keep cutting back the leaves that revert to the original green of brunnera.  I didn’t know that, and never cut them back and now I have nothing but plain green.  Do any of you grow the Jack Frost?  Has the same thing happened to you?

 My friend Sue brought the gargoyle back from a trip down south.  She had purchased one for herself, and she just knew I would want one too.  She was right of course.

Saint Francis of Assisi hangs out in my fern glade.  This is under a heavy canopy of trees and the ferns have filled in a large area over time.  Works for me, I don’t have to do much with this area except keep beating the ferns back into submission.  Saint Francis is watching over the ashes of our first dog, Buck.

This Japanese painted fern is across the driveway from St. Francis.  Isn’t it gorgeous?

To conclude today’s tour, I’m sharing the topper on my fountain.  My neighbor, nnK, gave me this.  I think her mom brought it back from Mexico, or something like that.  It just happened to fit perfectly at the top of my fountain.

This concludes today’s garden tour, I hope you enjoyed it.  I’ll try to remember to take you on a few more over the course of the summer as the garden changes and new things are blooming.

For now, I am headed back to the workshop to paint a couple of mid-century pieces that have been patiently waiting for their make-overs.

Have I mentioned that I have a lovely greenhouse with an amazing statue inside?  No?

 Well, I suppose I should add that it is miniature.

It’s part of my fairy garden.

Several years ago, I saw a fairy garden that was planted in a birdbath while strolling around a lovely Minneapolis neighborhood (I can’t remember which one anymore).  So when I saw a cracked birdbath for sale, cheap, I realized it would be perfect.

I’ve had this for many years now.  Each winter I take the top off and bury it in a corner of the garden near the house and cross my fingers to see what will survive.  The little evergreen tree did fine this year.  But it was a tough winter and it looks like several of my miniature hostas did not come back.  The bright lime green one in the front right is Chartreuse Wiggles.  I had a Blue Mouse Ears, but I don’t see it coming back up.  I will have to visit my hosta guy and see what he has in miniatures this year.  If any of you locals are looking for a great place to buy hostas, consider my hosta guy, Gordy.  He sells hostas from his yard, and he has great prices and amazing varieties.  He is an old fashioned guy and literally still has a calling list and he personally calls me each year to let me know that he is open (he opened last Saturday).   He is just south of highway 36 off of Rice Street.  He puts up signs once he is open, and I think he’s only open on weekends until he runs out of stuff.  His house doesn’t look like much from the front, but when you go around back you’ll see that he has 100’s (probably 1000’s is more like it) of hostas.  In fact, the hosta that you can see in the foreground of my photo that is just starting to unfurl is from Gordy and is called June.  It is one of my favorites, along with May which is a lovely bright green.

But, I digress …

You may have noticed that I transplanted the plants the I bought for my ironstone tureen earlier this spring into the fairy garden.

They were already starting to overflow the ironstone, so I knew they would be happier in the fairy garden.

I added a few more things that I picked up at Bachman’s and the fairy garden is ready to go.

“There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can’t prove that there aren’t any, either”.

One of my very first blog posts was about my window box and how I fill it up for winter.  Yikes, that seems so long ago!  But I’ve survived the long winter, and it’s time to fill the window box for summer.

It runs the full length of my front porch, which faces the street.  So I give it full priority each season because it is the mainstay of my curb appeal.

For the past several years I’ve been filling it with coleus in a mix bright lime greens and dark wine colors.

As you can see, they fill in nicely and do really well out there.  My house faces north, so I have somewhat limited options.  Big bloomers that love full sun aren’t at home there.

I tend to pick plants more for their foliage rather than their blooms anyway.  That’s just the way I roll.

I wanted to change it up this year though, so I searched for some pinspiration and found this.

More subdued.  All shade loving plants.  I went a little more monochromatic and left the hot pink impatiens out of my mix.

I added some white and green Caladium and some Euphorbia.

Euphorbia likes at least part sun, so I’m taking a chance that it will do well here, but I love its ethereal quality.

I also used a fern that I discovered last year at Bachmans called Nephrolepis Jester’s Crown.  It’s a little more compact and upright than the fern in my inspiration photo.

I have a little tip for you if you garden in the burbs like I do, head outside at 7 a.m.  No one else is out and about so the neighborhood is quiet, the birds are singing, there is amazing light for photos and it’s just all around sublime.

Here are my tools of the trade.  Coffee in my favorite Disney mug, plants, gloves.  In that order.

Have I mentioned that my window box is clad in some old metal crown molding that I purchased at Oronoco Gold Rush?  It started out painted white (as you can see in the first photo above), but it has chipped to reveal a layer of blue and then rusted in a most magnificent fashion.

Isn’t that delicious?

So, here it is all planted.  I confess, I have artfully arranged these photos so that you can’t see how really sparse it looks right now.  Also, I faked it with the Caladium.  They are still in their pots because they tend to be very sensitive to the cold, and just in case we get one more cold snap here in Minnesota, I need to be able to pull them out and put them in the house overnight.

In another month or so it will fill in and the plants will spill over a bit.  By the end of summer it will be bursting with white impatiens.  I’ll try to remember to share some more photos with you then.

I am very patiently waiting for spring.  It starts ever so slowly here in Minnesota.  I see signs of it though.  It starts with some crocuses and scilla.

But while I wait for it, I thought I would put together a little miniature garden to enjoy for now.

I bought this ironstone tureen at Junk Bonanza.  I just loved how crackled it was.  It didn’t have its lid any longer, and I just thought it would be fun to use as a little planter.

It has a great mark on the bottom.  Apparently this is a “classic shape”.

Anyway, I popped in to my local Bachman’s store and came away with some miniature plants and a bag of pebbles.

I put some pebbles at the bottom of my tureen, since there won’t be any proper drainage with this planter.

Then I just tucked in my little plants and added some tiny little white pots that I found at a garage sale last summer.  I had added my house numbers to them and they usually reside in my fairy garden outside.

Ta da!  A sweet little garden.

For now I am going to put him in the window at the bottom of the stairs.  Hopefully I will remember to keep him watered.  Maybe I’ll reconsider and bring him to the office to remind me of gardening while I am crunching numbers at the day job.

The garden takes on a certain beauty in winter.  And winter has definitely struck here in Minnesota.

Ask me about this at the end of March when winter has been dragging on for months and spring still seems far away and I will completely deny it.  But, for now, I think the snow is beautiful.

There is a certain quiet that comes along with winter.  Every sound is muffled by the snow.

In winter, I find it easier to give myself permission to spend an afternoon wrapped in a fluffy blanket watching old movies without feeling guilty about the weeds that are taking over, or the roses that need pruning.  I think having a long winter helps make me a better gardener.  By the time spring rolls around, I’m more than ready to get back at it.  But, for now I enjoy the break from garden tasks and can just enjoy the beauty of winter.

A couple of years ago, I asked my neighbor Ken to make a window box for me.  As is always the case, Ken did a bang up job.  I had already purchased some old tin crown molding that I knew I wanted on the front of it.  I also had some plastic rectangular planter boxes that I wanted to fit inside.  Ken took some measurements, and voila, created a window box.

It’s kinda huge.  But one of my biggest decorating rules is ‘go big, or go home’, also known as ‘never do anything half way’.  I wanted it to be the full length of my front porch windows.  However, it can be a bit expensive to fill up.  I consider it the ‘focal point’ of my front yard though, so it’s a priority to make it look fab for summer and winter.

Originally the tin had a coat of white paint.  Despite numerous clear coats every spring, the paint continues to flake off, first leaving that lovely shade of blue, and then just the rust.  Since I pretty much love anything rusty, I consider this a good thing.

To fill ‘er up without breaking the bank, in winter I use stuff from the garden.  Mostly hydrangeas, but there are some other things tucked in there as well.  Some seed pods, and even some dried Astilbe.  To make it pretty at night, I’ve added twig lights that can be found at Target.

I also include some fab rusty metal ornaments that work perfectly with the rusty tin.

As you can see, I don’t really go for a traditional Christmas look with reds and greens, or silver and gold.  I want something that’s going to look good for the entire winter … and here in Minnesota that means it has to last a good long time.  It won’t be long now before the window box has a couple feet of snow under it.  Dare I admit that I am looking forward to it?