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Cleomes and phlox in the garden

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Cleomes are strange looking flowers. They grow on long stocks and bloom as they grow. They have long spidery things that stick out all around the blooms giving them their strange look.

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I plant these flowers along the back edge of my garden. They grow to approximately 4 feet tall so they help screen me from my neighbors once they’ve grown enough. I always try to grow some white ones as well as pink and purple.

Another flower that I grow is Phlox David. I have four clumps of it in my backyard garden and it’s just lovely when it’s in full bloom.

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I like having some white flowers scattered throughout the garden. They seem to highlight certain areas of the garden, and of course at night these flowers are still visible so they add a nice touch if we’re sitting out on the patio.

Sorry my post was a little late today. We seem to have the flu or something like it running through the house and it appears to be my turn to fight the bug. Ugh.

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!






Rose of Sharon blooming

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I’m always surprised when I look at the stats for this site and I see the search term “Rose of Sharon” come up almost daily all year round. There’s obviously a lot more people than I thought looking for information about Rose of Sharon shrubs!

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My Rose of Sharon came to me 7 years ago as a gift from my neighbor. She has a Rose of Sharon, lets call it the mother tree, that is about 40+ years old.

I’m not sure how tall her tree is but lets say it’s somewhere between 12 and 15 feet tall. The seedling she gave me has grown quite a bit over the years and it’s only about two feet shorter than the mother tree. It’s trunk and branches have thickened, but they are still smaller in diam. than the mother trees – but not by that much.

This is definitely not the best picture of the tree that I’ve ever taken, but to show you how big it is this year and what it looks like in full bloom, here we go …

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You can see the power line above the tree so that should give you an idea of how tall it is.

It’s been a beautiful addition to my garden. I love it’s purple blooms. Birds love the tree year round, and butterflies and other insects enjoy the tree when it’s in bloom. I’m sure it’s helped attract some of the butterflies that frequent my yard regularly each year.

The Rose of Sharon is a fairly hardy tree, but it’s slow to leaf out in the spring. It’s often one of the last plants to start to show signs of life in my garden. I usually see leaves forming by early June, but there have been a few years where it hasn’t leafed out till close to the end of June.

My elderly neighbor always thinks her tree is dead each year because it’s so slow and each year I reassure her that it will leaf out and bloom – and it does.

I’ll bet that the Rose of Sharon being slow to start up in the spring or early summer is one of the major reasons why I get so many searches on my site for this lovely shrub.

I used to have a Hardy Hibiscus that would die down each winter, but for the past two years it’s failed to come up. I think it’s gone. My tropical Hibiscus – that I keep indoors in the winter – is doing well in a large urn at the front of the house. There are several peach colored blooms on it.

Do you grow Hibiscus? What type and what have your experiences been with the plant?

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!

Want a peek at my garden?

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In the middle of July (July 14th to be exact) I decide to take a couple of shots of the backyard, front yard and my planted boulevard garden. Would you like to see what my garden looks like this year?

Here’s a shot of the backyard:

My backyard garden

It’s not the best shot. We had our patio table umbrella down due to all the rain storms we’ve been having. Our table gets tipsy in the high winds and I don’t feel like going through the pain and expense of having to replace the table glass if it falls, so no umbrella in bad weather! The green tube on the table chairs is for collecting rain run off from the rain spout so that the area closest to the house doesn’t get flooded in a heavy downpour.

The tall tree on the left – well the tallest in our garden – is the Rose of Sharon tree. It’s in full bloom at this very moment, but two weeks ago when I took the picture it was only just starting to develop buds. It’s blooming a little early this year. I’ll get some pictures of it soon!

My box turtles are enjoying a daily snack on the flowers. They are edible. If you have a Rose of Sharon or a Hibiscus bush you might even want to try using the flowers in a salad or as a garnish.

There are a large number of plants in those flower beds! The main plants are of course roses, lavender, salvia, hostas, clematis, balloon flowers and annuals such as petunias and portulaca’s. If you’d like to see a not quite up to date list of all the plants we’re growing in our back, front and boulevard gardens have a peek at my What’s Growing page.

Just click on any of the pictures for a larger view.

I’m pleased with how my front yard is looking so far this year. Our Lab puppy, Midnight, did a lot of damage to the grass in the early spring so we’ve tried to keep her off our tiny front long over the last two months and the grass has been growing back nicely. We helped it out my reseeding of course.

my front yard and garden

Our puppy still tries to bite at the roses, grasses and some of the other plants in the front flower beds as she walks by, but mostly she just sniffs at the plants. It’s quite funny to see her smelling a rose. I think she likes them! At least if she ever tries to eat a rose I know they are non toxic!

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The front boulevard is coming along nicely. I don’t know if you remember my earlier posts about cleaning up the boulevard garden in the spring. We had to remove thick sunflower stalks and lots of weeds before I could plant some new plants this year. It was a mess! It’s nice and tidy now!

planted boulevard

The sunflowers are beginning to bloom as are the pink Dahlia, daylilies, malva and gayfeather. Cosmos have come up this year as well. I haven’t planted cosmos there for at least three years and they were absent the last two, but I guess there were still some viable seeds in the ground and they decided to grow this year so there are cosmo plants scattered among the main plants and they are beginning to bloom now as well.

I have Marigolds and Alyssum planted along the edge of the boulevard and we’ve trained a few Morning Glory vines to grow around the No Parking sign that mars my boulevard garden.  Our neighbors seems to enjoy our planted boulevard quite a bit.

Overall I’m quite pleased with how well my garden is doing this year. It’s been fairly hot this month, yet we’ve had a record amount of rain (and storms!), so the plants are getting lots of water, free nitrogen in the air from all the lightening storms and some good heat to get growing. I actually think I’ve only watered the garden twice this month. Yay! I’m saving money on water too!

I think I’ll make up some of my famous Alfalfa tea later today and let it brew for a week or so. The garden has been doing so well I haven’t thought of using my secret sauce (great organic fertilizer that alfalfa tea is!) on it yet this year, but at least one dose won’t hurt it at all.

How is your garden doing so far this summer? Has the weather been good for it? Have you been getting a lot of rain and like us haven’t had to water much?

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!

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