Gardens in Early July

Goodness, what a beautiful stretch of weather we've been having! The rain finally let up, giving way to sunshine and low humidity. As a result of this nice weather, my flower gardens are looking pretty good at the moment. Rest assured, all of this will change as we get into the "dog days" of August in Iowa. But for now, I'm enjoying the blooms!

This year, the only annuals I have planted are in pots. Otherwise all the plants you see in these photos are perennials. I love the look, longevity, and ease of perennial plants!

I had some trouble with the photos in last month's garden post. The problem is fixed now, so you can see the changes which have occurred over the past couple of weeks.

The garage garden is still sort of a mess because I haven't devoted much time to it, but I removed a couple of sprawling plants to tidy things up a bit. It still has issues...

I finally have flowers blooming in the area off the patio but I have WAY too much coreopsis! Sure, it's pretty, but its spreading nature makes it hard to contain.

The rose bush in the lower left has grown considerably beyond what I anticipated. I thought it was a miniature rose bush. Instead, it's a huge sprawling thing which is taking much more space than I allowed for it. Other plants are going to have to move for it, because it's WAY too thorny to relocate!

There's a lot of yellow right now, but soon we'll have purple thistle and pink liatris in bloom.

I planted this lead plant last summer. This native prairie plant is going to be really interesting once it fills out!

One of the items on my summer to-do list is to re-do the garden edging. We used to have that black plastic stuff, but I hated it so we pulled it up. Of course, we haven't been diligent enough in taming the grass, so now the edges of the gardens are not tidy at all, as you can see below. This makes me crazy!

Due to the excessive rain, I've had trouble with some of the patio pots. I let them dry out thoroughly then gave them all a dose of Miracle Grow and most are looking much better now. Unfortunately, I lost all the dahlia plants and many of the vincas, so all of those had to be replaced.

This hanging basket was beautiful for a few days after we brought it home then it started looking very sickly, presumably due to the excessive rain. I let it dry out and cut it way back, then I fertilized it a couple of times. It seems to be recovering nicely, even though it has a "mullet" look right now. :)


 The daylilies have just started blooming, and the heliopsis plant is really taking off. This is another extremely hardy prairie plant. It's really tall but never needs much staking.

Here you can see some of that ugly black edging which needs to come out. You can also see some gaps and crowding issues in this area. Typical of my garden problems...

 

 But from a distance, things don't look so bad! :)

 

 Right now the spirea bushes are in full bloom. We have a LOT of them. They are dependable and very pretty, but I sure wish they weren't pink! I'm not a fan of pink.

 

 

The pots Bailey planted for me for Mother's Day are doing really well. As you can see from my June post, they've filled out nicely in just the past couple of weeks.

 

Because of all the rain we've had, the area in front of the house is looking good at the moment. The ground cover in this garden requires significant moisture and if we don't get it (or I don't water sufficiently), things go downhill quickly.

 

 Now that I've got a few things blooming, it will soon be time to pick some bouquets to take inside. That's one of the best parts about gardening. Here's hoping you are enjoying your gardens this summer, too!

Janet