This Week in the Garden – May 3

If you love color in the garden, this is the post for you. Other than some brief descriptions, I’m not going to rhapsodize how much I love this garden. I think the pictures speak for themselves. (Click on the Panorama Views for the larger/full size photo).

Panoramic view of the front yard.

Lots of Spanish Bluebells are everywhere- they can be aggressive. But I love how they look in large masses.

Here’s another grouping in the lower garden. Looking up the back slope with flowering azaleas and a flowering Spirea.

I also have a few smaller clumps of pink Hyacinthoides hispanica. They are not as tall, and don’t spread quite as easily.

The Spirea in the other picture is actually quite a large bush. There are thousands of these tiny flowers.

Another white flowering ‘bush’ (although it’s quickly becoming a tree) is a flowering Viburnum. There is one in the front side yard, and one in the back, behind the garden bench.

The lower garden paths are lined with color now. This is probably about the peak of the azaleas right now, although there are several bushes that haven’t started opening their buds yet.

View from the other direction. That’s sedum growing in the low tuffa pot. I haven’t decided what to put in the larger pot this year (if anything).

One of my projects to do this year is to refinish the bench. It needs to be stripped, sanded, filled, primed, and painted. I haven’t decided on any color(s) yet, any suggestions?

Here you can see another bush, other than the azaleas, that is also blooming this time of year–Rainbow Leucothoe.

I have a handful of these graceful bushes. This one is out front.

Another flowering bush is the Slender Deutzia. In this shot, you can see the grapevine coming back (I cut it way back), the hydrangeas new leaves at the base of the plant, and two little tomatoes I planted along the fence.

I have a great view in the mornings, dappled sunlight through the trees.

The Wisteria is training well. I hope I can continue to figure it out.

Here’s the view in the daytime from the back deck.

On the deck, I’ve got my veggies and herbs potted up. I bought a whole bunch of tomato starters, some celery, red peppers, jalapeno peppers, zucchini, basil, rosemary, parsley, and chocolate mint. This year we’re determined to get lots of fresh vegetables. I also planted several down in the garden where ever I could find room.

Also potted up some planters too for some color. This one features a red Dahlia, Caladium, and (I think) a Cordyline.

At the base of the deck stairs I added ‘Caramel’ Heuchera to the big blue pot, and a Heuchera ‘LimeLight’ with some coleus to the smaller green pot.

Pink underleaves of the Heuchera, and the top side will turn more apricot in winter.

The side yard is alive with color as well, some that’s even a bit unexpected.

The ‘Star of Bethlehem’ flower is showing now that the Spring Starflower has subsided.

Up next to the house is this pretty little pink flower. Last year I thought it might be a bellflower, but I couldn’t find anything that quite looked right. While searching flowering bushes, I came across a Weigela that looked very similar. The only problem is, mine is not very big, and does not look like a bush. I’m going to take a closer look at it soon though. Maybe it’s a baby that self-seeded from another plant that was here. I did fine a Weigela plant card in the box…

The Columbine’s are big and beautiful this year. Not all of them have come back, but most of them did, plus some new babies.

This group in the veggie patch is quite large and colorful this year.

This pink Columbine has not only grown, but has spawned two smaller plants.

This azalea looks so tropical to me with it’s large pink star-like flowers. You can see the Ferns and Hostas have come back.

I also noticed that many of the berries have been picked off the Mahonia (Oregon Holly).

Sometimes a regular picture hardly does the view justice.

I just love it. There’s a view around every corner.