Well, it appears my garden season is over for 2019. The increasingly cold, wet and miserable weather is telling me to give it up. It was a great season, with lots of garden successes to snap pictures of. When I remembered to that is.
Success with Annuals
Still one of my favourite annuals, these gorgeous cleome (AKA spider flowers) went crazy in a garden at the hospice I volunteer at. Unfortunately, they are non-hardy annuals in our climate, but I will definitely plant some again next spring. I like to plant as many colour variations as I can find, this year I used dark pink, pale pink and white…
Other annuals starring in my garden successes included coleus (they come variegated in contrasting colours), miniature multi-coloured hibiscus (for a tropical look), portulaca (for full sun colour) as well as black-eyed-susan and sweet potato vines…
Eye Popping Colour Combinations
Another of my garden successes this season involved the colour combinations I chose in several containers. Remember, the best colour combos are those that are opposites on the colour wheel. Don’t try to match your colours if you are going for the WOW factor, contrasting colours give more of an impact…
Container Gardening
The containers I planted for clients and myself were garden successes too. As described above, I aim for colour combinations that create splashes of bold colours…
These window boxes were created to add a splash of colour to the otherwise bland white older portion of the same hospice mentioned above. The empty window boxes came from a client that passed away a few years ago. I added perennials from my own gardens and a few annuals for contrasting colours, then attached six of them to the wall below the windows with brackets…
Wedding Flowers
I attempted more wedding flowers this season and am happy to say these too were one of my garden successes. This time I had the pleasure of creating small tabletop arrangements. The biggest hurdle was the colour scheme. The bride and groom wanted blue and silver but anyone with a bit of flower savvy knows that neither blue or silver are abundant colours in gardens. Unless of course you want to order (expensive) exotic varieties from afar. They turned our well, phew…
Other beauties
My lily trees just keep getting more and more gorgeous every year. Their very first season they grew to about eighteen inches with a few blooms. This year I had multiple, thick, sturdy stems with tons of spectacular blooms…
This time of year any nice days are a rare bonus, we were fortunate to experience a few last week. This picture shows a rose bush in a client’s garden that would just not quit. It is (was) so beautiful that neighbours thought the blooms were fake. When they saw me preparing the garden for the winter, one neighbour came over to comment and check for herself…
