from Tracey G.

It’s been a LONG time since I’ve actively taken care of my various gardens around the yard. Once Harry was born, the hobby Jeremy and I avidly did together and spent almost every weekend working on (I swear o spent more time outside in the spring/summer than I did in the house!) kind of fell by the wayside. It’s a good thing I’m a huge fan of perennials, because it allowed my garden to keep on trucking without much input from me!

But I do have my favorites that I look forward to seeing come up every year!

* Coneflowers/Shasta Daisies – I love any daisy-type flower really, but these two are my #1 favorites. I lumped them together because as far as performance abc looks they’re very close!

* Catmint – Not only is it a big, fluffy mounded plant, that has the prettiest little flowers (and a lot of them!), but cutting it back usually gets you another round of it and my cats love this cousin to Catnip!

* Garden Phlox – And of this beautiful, wonderful smelling and tall plant, my favorite variety is “David”. I love the white blooms and I swear I’d have them all over the place in ever flower bed I have! I think they’re in 3 now…

from Kris B.

Since Weber and I got married in 2010, we have remodeled our house, completely landscaped our yard, and built the greenhouse.  Though each was a major accomplishment and got checked off of “the list,” each is also still a work in progress, particularly the landscaping and the greenhouse.  Theoretically, those two things should work together.  This is a big part of our work in progress.  What we have growing in the greenhouse and what we want and need in the yard are not the same things. 🙂  The greenhouse is filled with bonsai, tropicals, a few bromeliads, and some hanging baskets that we wintered over from last year.  The yard needs perennials that flower and a few splashes of annual color.  We should have started the annuals from seeds in the greenhouse several months ago.  Oh well.  Next year.

So like everyone else, I made my spring trek to the garden center to get a few of my favorite plants to fill in some holes in the landscaping.  Some of my favorites – both old and new are:

• Hydrangea – I love hydrangea, but was not sure how well they would do in the heat of the Texas summer.  Last year I had one in a pot on the patio.  It did well over the summer, with a lot of water, and spent a happy winter in the greenhouse.  This year, I am going to try planting a couple of them in the ground.  Their big blooms makes me smile!
• Gerbera Daisies – Gerbera Daisies never disappoint.  I have bright oranges ones and they come back year after year.  They are the first flowers to bloom each spring and the last to stop blooming in the fall.
• Blue Salvia – It’s blue.  Need I say more?  I love the blue, but we planted the blue salvia, along with Lantana and Butterfly Bush to attract bees, hummingbirds, and, yes, butterflies. The different colors of the flowers when they are all in bloom and the fluttering of the colorful winged critters is  glorious.  This spot in our yard is our little corner or paradise.

I still have a lot to do outside in the garden to make it like I want it, but I look forward to planting and weeding and pruning; this never feels like work.  Any time I get to spend outside (without mosquitoes and 100+ degree temps) is a true gift.

What do you enjoy in your garden?