Hi Deborah,

Thank you for sharing your garden. A Japanese lady in our town created a garden over a cement parking lot next to their home/business place.  City dwellers can create a special space even in the middle of a busy city.  A garden show I sometimes watch, has showed the beautiful roof gardens in our major cities.

So glad you visited and hope you come back often and tell us more about your special oasis.

 

MIchael,

Very good to remind us to composte.  I can not believe that people send their vegetable scrapes thru the sewer instead of composting.  It can be done in a tub indoors too.  If you add your little friends the earthworm, they will clean up the garbage and leave you the richest soil imaginable. There are professional composting units that look nice.  Compost tea is great for watering plants.

The worst nature basher is the person who puts their leaves in plastic bags and sends them to the dump. If the bag does not desinagrate what good are the leaves doing sitting there for upteen thousand years.

Last winter, I planted spinach indoors and had fresh leaves to add to salad. Just the thought of a fresh veg. growing there was a comforting thought. Of course parsley, lavendar, stevia and others do well indoors in the winter months.

Come back often and share more. 

Hi Mary

I love pelargoniums and geraniums.  They are such beautiful plants and there is a great variety of them.  We used to have a majority of these plants in our garden but, my husband has changed our garden to an easy low maintanance one, which consists of coloured stone, succulents and different vareitys of flaxes.  It's Ok but, I miss my beautiful flowers.

Warmest Regards Elizabeth G

http://www.yorgoo.com/cgi-bin/ref.cgi/16114

http://elizabeth.powerside.hop.clickbank.net

http://everythingforsuccess.com/profiles/Elizabeth

http://www.allsolutionsnetwork.com/EG/EG33385

 

Hi Mary,

My favorite garden flower is the Lantana. Often mistaken for a "Butterfly bush". But much more abundant at the nurseries and much more affordable. Lantana attracts bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. The range in color from yellow, white, pink, orange, purple and a mix of colors on one bush.

They also come in different sizes. There is the "dwarf" that you can plant for an outside border with light blooms and fair colored foilage. Medium size for the next row. And Giants to plant at the back. It dosen't take many to cover a large area. And they give off a nice, mild fragrance with abundance of color to spice up any yard. Fast growing and hardy.

The only problem I have found is it's hard to get them back after the winter. Last year I did some research online and found that it is necessary to cover them with atleast 4" of mulch to winterize them. I did so and 90% of my plants came back this year. I filled in with new ones where I had lack of growth, and the new plants have already "caught up" with last years plants. So, all in all, they make a pretty good garden.

Good luck,
Your friend,
Angela

Mary, This thread promises to bring a lot of joy for quite a while! I can visualize everyone's different gardens, and expand the pleasure I get from my own. Maybe you could put up a picture-sharing place with a free photo album somewhere, and we could all post pictures of our gardens? Thanks to Angela for more information about lantana...my neighbors have a beautiful specimen of what they call butterfly bush, and I'd like to have some, too, but don't have a large enough spot for one like theirs. I didn't know they come in different sizes. I'd like to put in a plug for the humble chrysanthemum. Different varieties bloom from summer to late fall, they come in all sorts of colors from white and pure yellow to the muted fall colors that I love, and many have an unforgettable spicy scent. Their blooms range from tiny little one-inch diameter buttons to the elegant, lacy spider varieties that are up to 4 inches in diameter. They'll grow in almost any kind of soil and are just an all-around great utilitarian color perennial. I may also be partial to them because I was born in November, which is represented by the chrysanthemum in the flower calendar. No matter where I garden, I always have a few chrysanthemums to enjoy. Cheri