Spring is Just Around the Corner

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Spring is in the air, I can tell because the birds are all out there singing, the Robins are singing, green buds forming on the trees and shrubs. At last!

Today, I would like to begin to share with you pictures of my yard and shade gardens and the structural elements that go into making it a beautiful garden. Right now it looks kind of barren as you can see from the first picture. This is my larger shade garden at the side of the ravine. I have wrap around decks starting on that side that go half way around the house with another small one off my patio garden room. You can see my Nikko Blue Macrophylia Hydrangeas with their winter interest still intact. I have six of these plants in my garden. I am wondering how they will bloom this year after such a hard winter that we have had in Northern Ohio. I will take new pictures of this garden as the season progresses. It is truly amazing at the transformation as soon as warmer weather arrives. There will be plenty of old fashioned bleeding hearts, white bleeding hearts, chartruese leaf pink bleeding hearts (hybrid variety), brunnaria, ferns, azalias, hydrangeas, foam plants, epidemiums, hostas, Japanese Maple Tree, and lots of other plants to numerous to mention.

The next picture is of an Apple Blossom Heliobore (Lentin Rose). It is just going to bloom. I got this one from my Garden Club Raffle about five years ago. This is the first year it did not bloom under the snow covering, because the snow was never ending and too deep. Aweful winter we had.

The next picture is of my Arbor, just waiting to be covered in clematis and honeysuckle. The entire arbor will be filled by the end of May and blooming away. I cut everything down in November and pull out the dead leaves, etc. to tidy it up for next year. I have a sandstone pathway through this garden to the surround decks. Also, there is a semi-circular bump out to the right of the arbor that will hold my black iron decorative bench. I need to wire brush it down this year and give it a good coat of black matte Rustoleum. The picture above is the bench in my garage waiting for a repainting and a pic of where it will go in the garden, in front of three treallises awaiting various clematis vines to start up again. I also have about seven or eight large yellow leafed hostas surrounding the bench and a collection of my Mother's stone collection from New Mexico surrounding the front of the hostas for soil retention and to remember her by. This is a great place to read a book or relax while your gardening. The ravine is in front of the gardens and the wildlife is amazing.

Hope you enjoyed my garden pics today. I will be blogging a couple of times more this week with other pics from my ravine and back garden.

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