Ah yes, she is still alive - as are the gardens. As well as ever-expanding. 😁😁
I'll let the pictures speak...
When we last left off, I had a newly planted rain garden of natives, most of which didn't bloom until the following year (see further pictures), but the late-blooming swamp-mallow (native hibiscus) was the jewel!
Slowly starting to fill in...
Lovely midsummer coloring with black-eyed susans and four o' clocks...
By November all has largely faded and the winterberries start shining...
Spring brought dogwood blossoms on my baby tree!
And a constant flow of new plants 😁😁
And new beds 😁😁😁
The fleabane is the perfect plant to bridge the "in between" of spring bloomers and summer bloomers. It's also a nice medium height which seems often allusive among plants. (And it blooms for over a month! And reseeds and pops up for a fall bloom in places too!)
Summer gorgeousness with gardenia and lily flowers behind butterfly weed and penstemon...
Fleabane gotta get its glory in there too...
Last year I grabbed a red 'Jacob Cline' bee's balm (monarda)...probably a partially non-native cultivar, but too beautiful not to call good enough!
Alongside the 'Burning Heart' heliopsis which I moved here so it wouldn't get lost among the also yellow black-eyed susans (I switched it with purple echinacea which looks great amidst the yellow - see below)
Black-eyed susans, echinacea, lovely light purple monarda I expanded here last year...
My cardinal flowers have been incredible this year! I planted them all around the yard and saw a hummingbird at them every day!
The phlox behind in my shade garden is just happiness all around!
Late summer blooms with my 8' tall cutleaf coneflower mixed with the 6' tall cosmos...
One of my new jewels from last year - purple Joe Pye weed that gets to be up to 8' tall (as did my swamp mallow hibiscus!) and then turns into lovely pinkish brown fluffy as it fades after summer....
I brightened this photo up a lot because camera cannot capture how spectacularly the mix of flowers pop when looking out my kitchen window!
The color combination of the orange cosmos, red cardinal flower, blue cardinal flower, (earlier there were yellow black-eyed susans in there too!), and a new favorite - pinkish three-nerved Joe Pye weed! Gorrrrgeous!
It's been an absolutely lovely year of flowers; bringing me so much happiness whenever I look out regardless of the season. I feel like after over a decade of gardening here I'm finally seeing my dreams come true!!
But I don't do this just for me. This year I got to see again all the little friends I am also gardening for...
The gardens have been a-swam and a-buzz and it's been beautiful!! Not just visually, but such beautiful fullness in seeing my attempts working to do my teeny tiny part to help this broken world.
