daylily

Now that we’re in the height of summer many of my roses have taken a break from blooming but my garden is still full of flowers.

The hostas are flowering and so are most of the daylilies, black eyed susans, sunflowers, balloon flowers, petunias, impatiens and many others.

Today I thought I’d show you a few of my beautiful daylilies.

I think this one is called Candy Stripe or something to that effect. If definitely has the word Candy in it’s name.

I grow this daylily in my planted front boulevard because it blooms several times each season.

The next daylily is Sammy Russel and I think it’s beautiful. I love it’s vibrant color!

Another colorful daylily that grows in my backyard is Bonanza. I love it’s bright yellow color.

Last, but not least, is Cream Drop. I grow this daylily at the end of my driveway in front of my Valencia and Breath of Life roses. It’s soft yellow color goes well with their peachy orange.

I know that many of our Green Thumb Sunday participants grow daylilies. What’s your favorite one?

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

Hens and Chicks in the garden

by Tricia

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When we first moved into our house it had a garden, but not a great garden. It had a lot of weedy plants that spread throughout the garden and even into the grass. I can’t remember the name of this simple green leafed plant, but it was everywhere and it’s notoriously invasive.

Other than the weedy plant that took about four years to completely get rid of, there were mainly veggies, rhubarb, raspberries, strawberries, lilies and what appeared to be a fairly young apple tree and pear tree – planted in the middle of the yard!

I know I’ve got a few pictures of what the garden looked like before we started landscaping, but I think they’re on my other computer. Anyway … you can probably picture it. It was pathetic!

At the front of the house, beside our very narrow driveway there’s a very small garden bed. This was filled with hens and chicks. They were straggly as they were trying to grow in a very shady area.

When I was planting new plants in my newly created raised garden beds in the spring of 2002 I moved most of the hens and chicks to the back garden beds. As you can see from the photo above they are thriving in the sunny backyard. Click on the photo for a larger view if you’d like – the larger photo is quite nice.

The Hens and Chicks (Sempervivum), particularly in this especially sunny area have spread out and grown into the crevices of the interlocking stones. They look lovely … even better after I’ve picked out the dead leaves and mulch that get stuck in them over winter!

As for that very shady garden bed? Once I removed the hens and chicks I planted shade loving plants like Bleeding heart, lily of the valley, a fern, hosta and in a less shady area a Stella D’ora daylily, plus a few other plants.

Actually, I spent some time today adding new plants to that small flower bed and later today I’ll be planting more plants (that I purchased two weeks ago!) in the front boulevard. I’ll tell you what I planted in a new post once I’m finished the job. Hopefully I’ll have a few photos too.

In the meantime … if you want to see an older picture of what my back yard garden looked like in July of 2003 – one year after most of the plants had been added to the garden, here you go:

The garden has matured quite a bit since that time and I’ve managed to add more plants! Oh and I’ve moved a few around too. So it looks similar … but different … better maybe.