First, though, I found some photos of how it looked early May 2016; right when a few of my friend's plants were just coming up for the first time (teeny little tufts of Native Ginger in the front!) Wow how it filled out even later that year and especially this year since I divided plants in the fall! (Current photos at the bottom)...
Now then. When first picking out plants for the shade garden in 2015, husband found a giant, ugly bulb he was very excited about...
An Elephant Ear!
Not entirely sure I was aware they can get to like 12' or some insane size like that when I agreed to put it in the shade garden, but boy was it incredible when it came up that year!
In what can only be described as moments of pure insanity, we have NO photos of it!
The leaves got huge and it was at least 5' tall! It was spectacular!
I even bought another variety (Colocasia Esculenta Illustris) with smaller, darker leaves to compliment it.
Happy, happy year!
Unfortunately, when I went to re-plant the bulbs in 2016 (they have to be pulled out every winter), I hadn't stored them right and they fell apart and stupid me didn't look up how to re-plant them and I think I only planted the little finger tubers, not the main "heart" of the clump or some crazy dumbness like that....sooooooo they didn't get as big last year. :-( (And again, I just pulled out little bunches of tubers before the winter, not a big clump :-/)
So we shall see how they do this year; they're always late to come up and it freaks us out thinking they're not coming at all. Hope I didn't really, really screw it up this year!
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And then, I keep joking that I should call this my "friendship garden" because I've gotten plants from others and it's so fun! The plants from my friend who moved away are doing just fabulously! Everything is coming back very nicely.
The Columbines are gorgeously in bloom right now:
Last summer I also brought home some plants from my Mom-in-law's shade garden: another fabulous gardener I'm amazed by (ooohhhh...idea! A post featuring a guest garden by a non-accidental gardener...?! :-D).
We are actually 2nd and 3rd generation "parents" of these plants because they first came from my brother-in-law's mom (no idea where she got them from...maybe we're like the 5th and 6th generaton-ers!) One is this little baby daisy-looking thing that I just fell in love with! I plopped it in front of the bird feeder pole and it came back this year! I'm so excited for them to start blooming!(After much back and forth and a million Google searches because the leaves are so unique with these little flowers, we believe it's a 'Plenum Chrysanthemum' {Tanacetum parthenium}. My buds have started, so we shall see when it comes up!)
The other is a 'Britt-Marie Crawford' (first time I'd ever heard of or seen it!) whose unique, large leaves have started up again this year! (It'll bloom with pretty yellow flowers...shown in the elephant ear photo above.)
And finally she passed on some really cool-looking sedum plants that she had gotten from her neighbor (the love just keeps spreading!) that I'd never seen before, but they add some neat shape and color to fill in spots.I also [asked permission before removing from the premise] a rock from one of my favorite places: a retreat space in the mountains in PA I get away to each year.
That now sits at the entrance to one of my little unfinished pebble paths.
So yes, it is delightful and beautiful and doing quite well and filled with beautiful growing things that remind me of people I love!
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