At Last! The End of the Garden Tour
Hi there, and welcome back to what has surely been the slowest garden stroll in history. When we last left off I think we had safely made it out of the raised bed garden, headed toward the gazebo. I always have trouble escaping this garden area - it is the most complicated of my gardens - the rest having mostly been planted for a combination of beauty and ease of maintenance. The walled garden is as high maintenance as I get.
(Amd I admit I slowed down deliberately, trying to stretch out our stroll until the daylilies hit their peak!)
My husband, of course, had no difficulty walking through that gate and away from the main garden - he doesn't even perceive such things as weeds, and still laughs when I talk about deadheading, since he knows I've never been a rock music fan. And so he leads the way up the grassy slope.
It only takes a few steps. Then we are at the gigantic island that surrounds a row of very tall conifers of various types. The sunny side is edged with a haze of lavender. But the gazebo is on the shady side of the island and so our path meanders beside a veritable lake of sweet woodruff, keeping about a dozen white and pale pink rhododendrons and masses of hellebores afloat. Of course it has taken us so long to get here that none of these are in bloom anymore - but it was a lovely spectacle while it lasted.
The other path to the gazebo is a curved border awash with silver foliage - artemisias in several varieties, Perovskia (Russian sage), Helichrysum, gray santolina and lavender. As usual this border is not exactly what I wanted it to me. My original vision was of misty lavenders and the palest of pinks peeping through all that silver. But I kind of overdid my daylily buying a few years back (I went to the American Hemerocallis Society's convention and it is VERY hard to resist a gorgeous blooming plant direct from the hybridizer's own garden - especially with people with shovels standing by to help.) So while it does have pale pink snapdragons and verbena, as planned, it also hosts some lovely pale yellow daylilies, a few in apricot (which works for me!) and one absolutely gorgeous plant in a deep purple with a thin gold edging that is totally out of place but so beautiful that it's hard to care.
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