Garden Timeline 2016

In 2016, I made two new garden areas (despite already having too many existing gardens that were becoming increasingly hard to maintain). I love designing and planting new gardens, but I don't always love maintaining them--particularly when challenges like runner grass or thuggish weeds make it difficult. 

My number of garden areas peaked in 2016--I made a list the following spring and realized that I had nearly 40 garden beds and garden areas, many of which were difficult to maintain, or even to remember to maintain. 

In 2016:

• I slightly enlarged the Peony Border to add an area for irises
• I also re-designed the North Border to make two areas, for Winter interest and Summer interest

The Iris Bed

The newly planted Iris Border, with poppies, alliums and lilies for later interest. This bed looked pretty nice in springtime, but I was never able to eliminate the runner grass that was growing between and inside the peonies  (they had been growing in lawn for decades). I removed all but the peonies from this area only two years later.

The North Border

The North Border had been too large and difficult to keep weeded, so I redesigned it in 2016:

The new curvy front section of the North Border was now planted with flowering plants that bloomed during Spring, summer and autumn. I called it the Summer Border. Like the Iris Bed, this area lasted only a couple of years.

The back section of the North Border was planted only with evergreen trees and shrubs, with a few pockets of early bulbs, in a heavily mulched bed. I called that part the Winter Border, because it is intended to give year-round interest--this border is seen from my kitchen sink, and I wanted something interesting to look at all year, not just in summertime. This area has done well and has grown into a nice garden feature over the past decade.

Front Border

I realized in late 2015 that I had a problem with the (unknown to me when I planted them) invasive Obedient Plant Physotegia (or Disobedient Plant, as I like to call it now). I had to dig out my entire Front Border and two sections of the Rainbow Border, and spray any O.P that came up, for more than a year.

Before: Invaders!

Dismal work In Progress....

Not very interesting now, but this "Nuclear Option" had to be resorted to. I hoped in 2017 to be able to plant again in a new design focusing on bulbs, annuals and only a few perennials.

The New Sunroom

The biggest project we did in 2016 was an indoor gardening project: I had my front porch enclosed into a sunroom! Now I don't have to pine for springtime all winter; I can surround myself with green plants all year 'round.

This is my Happy Place in winter. House plant acquisition is just as addictive as outdoor plant buying.... I found the plant stands at Aldi, of all places, just when I was eyeing them online at prohibitive prices.

We also changed the design of the front steps to our house. Before, they were built out into a point, but this corner was beginning to rot, so we had our builder saw out the corner and build new hand railings and a new post in the new interior corner. Happily, there was still old concrete underneath, so I could use this new space for displaying potted flowers.

More Photos

The row of 'Pink Spires' crabapple trees we planted in 2010 began to bloom well by 2016

The addition front border is a good place for spring bulbs, with its south-facing, well-draining soil.

The delphiniums also still looked great. I think I'll have to try these again here.... 

Sweet peas and snapdragons on the east side of my house. Sweet peas are not commonly grown in Iowa, because our summers get too hot, but I've found that they'll bloom through the summer if they get afternoon shade and you keep them well-watered and cut the flowers every few days.

This is one of the large garden areas filled with daylilies that I had only a few years before I got rid of it. It was hard to keep weeded.

Here's the part of that area further down, as it transitioned into the Yellow Garden. Ugh.

My four Cutting Garden beds looked nice, with mixed-color bachelor buttons, larkspur and cosmos.

And I grew gladioluses through this piece of cattle fence to stake them.

I discovered how great coleus is this year.

The bed on the east side of our tractor shed looked really nice that year, with 'Pink Poppet' weigela and dark pink lupines. 

There were also pink roses in that same bed too.

The Yellow Garden had begun to fill in: with flowers and also with weeds too.

2017>>