Vojt

Lush garden and artful photos!

I'm late to the party but wanted to say that your garden is inviting and I love the chair with the plants sitting on it!

lovely garden! Your tree peony looks like the one I have, yachiyo tsubake. Strangely, as it has aged, it has developed two slightly different colored fowers: a paler and a darker version. Is that what I see in your photo or have the flowers just aged?

Beautiful, fresh, and very emotional. I'm all about rocks and that stone-epimedium combination is great!. Thanks for sharing.

Michaele, thanks for clearing up the info on the teak bench. Now I see its scale. I love the weathering as well. Euphorbia myrsinites is listed as a weed and noxious weed in some states, and I think invasive. That being said, I love it and don't think it is invasive in Ohio. What is shocking to me is that it has seeded itself UP HILL in my garden. Not sure how that has happened, but the seedlings are easy to identify and pull up where not wanted. I haven't found that I am allergic to the sap, but many are.

Beautifully and tastefully done. Thanks for giving us glimpses of your personal haven. I am green with envy over that table with the sculptural arrangement on it. At first I thought it was wood, but is it marble?

That is great vision!

Stunning garden and stone walls. Each photo is wonderful!

I've wondered how one could integrate the acid-yellow leaves and clasihing pink blossums of that bleeding heart cultivar into a garden. Now I see! Nice job.

Delightful and so perfectly "spring"! Great epimedium.

great tulips and urn. love that you named your beds!

I think I like all the great containers they have as much, if not more, than what is in them. So great.

magical!

That japanese maple has to be one of the most beautiful trees I have ever seen! Thanks for sharing your travels, Michelle!

amazing and lush. love the pr imrose and moss.

Those are some great shots. Especially love the trillium and the birdhouse. The Dr. Seuss skinny tree is just hysterical!

Lush and dense and lovely! Love the view from the screened porch. One of my favorite hostas is sagae. If you don't have it, get it! or maybe next time I visit my family I'll bring you a division, since I grew up in Cedar Rapids. :) At least when I was young, I believe our state slogan was "Iowa: a place to grow". Maybe they meant gardens!

Great garden in a challenging climate! I was born and raised in Iowa, and even though everywhere has experienced warming, the weather can be pretty severe. Looking forward to more pics!

exhausting and exhilarating is right! love the polygonatum coming up . looks like ocean life in the deep sea.

wow!

We've visited Victoria twice and great gardens like this are part of the draw and charm. Love the colors you have painted. I've never seen penstemon grown in pots. Very cool.

Much more interesting and inviting. Well done!

So rich and green! Especially love the container with the salvia. I didn't know there were salvias with such great foliage.

Love the poppies and the stone arrangement with the peony!

Having personally watched this garden grow from nothing to a colorful and fragrant extravaganza makes it even more impressive! It is truly a picturesque setting for relaxation and entertaining good friends. Looking forward to tomorrow's photos. So glad you decided to share your garden.

Doesn't look like a rookie garden to me!

Beautiful and hopeful! Especially love the snow on the tulips. I'm glad this isn't my yard, though, because I would spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get those boulders out of the edge and into the center of the yard! Thanks for the preview of what is surely coming soon.

Amazing stonework and wonderful plantings. Great plant choices. I am green with envy, and maybe my garden will start to turn green soon!

Great containers. I have a hard time believing those lush planters are in Utah!
Michelle, the GPOD email I received said 'sorry there is a problem' and did not link. Don't know if anyone else's email came that way. By the number of comments and 'thumbs up', I'd think so. Just navigated here on my own.

I'd totally need a garden staff to keep my yard so tickety-boo. Love the stone wabi basins and objet d'art scattered about.

Great solution and it looks like the plant palette is both beautiful and not fussy.

Simply beautiful!

quite an artful and peaceful garden! so pleasant to view.

Even though the thick, wet snow covering Ohio this morning is beautiful, this densely planted garden is so much better!

There really is something hopeful about spring flowers in snow. Especially like the shot with the hyacinths. Arum Italicum grows vigorously here in zone 6a. I've had the straight species thriving since '98. This one looks like one of the more heavily marbled cultivars.

Ditto on what has already been said! Looking forward to part 2!

Who would have thought that lawn could be so interesting! Very cool. When my kids were little, I would mow our little patch of lawn into a grid, providing a scene for all sorts of imaginative games.

I really enjoyed this issue of the 'fine birding' blog! I think cedar waxwings are one of the most beautiful birds. Wish they weren't so shy.

So sorry you have been sick! Hope your family has escaped the flu! Don't try to get back to full speed too quickly.

Really beautiful and refreshing. I have a few crocus buds getting ready for the squirrels to shred to pieces, but warm weather is on the way and more plants should be awakening!

Great shots of some beautiful plants. Your trillium looks so healthy and vigorous: guess it's a very natural choice for a woodland!

Even before I read Michelle's comment, I had decided I was going to make a non-garden comment: your prose is beautiful. It really enhanced my enjoyment of your picturesque garden.

Idyllic! What a treat to see your colorful, Spring garden. The primrose and astrantia are especially nice.

So I know it's not a gardening comment, but that is the coolest woodpecker on your bird feeder! Congrats on your beautiful setting in which to make your garden.

OK. I am just plain jealous. Wonderful garden!

Cramming in a collection of plants cheek to jowl is my kind of gardening. This winter I'm dreaming about what I can dig up to make room for new plants! Your garden looks like a treasure hunt.

I agree with friendlync1960. aesculus pavia, a type of buckeye.

Part of my job is working in Photoshop. This image looks very edited. The blue color has been augmented and the white outline is artificially added. Searching "blue primrose" finds similar primroses-although blue in flowers is often a relative term. cheers.

Gail, thanks for sharing photos of this exhuberant garden! I went back to look at the photo of your rose arch and Michelle is right: ridiculously gorgeous. I hope you have sent more photos of your garden to Michelle.

Stunning! Plus beautiful photos. I envy your proximity to Vancuuver Island. We missed Butchart Gardens on our visits there, but did spend time at the Abkazi (sp?) garden, which is another must-see.

I'm amazed at the agave, cactus, and bonsai japanese maple. Those are real collector's items. Is the agave with the emerging bloom a second one? How long have you had it for it to reach maturity and it's sad end of life?

Quite a herculean task, but the fruit of your labors must be very rewarding! Picturesque!

I really enjoy the different palettes you used for your two garden rooms. Very inviting.

I've had Sambucus Black Lace for several years here in zone 6. It's been a reliable performer and hasn't suckered or become multi-trunk. It responds well to cutting back, and you can stick the cuttings in the ground to root to make new plants. In full sun, mine have stayed relatively small with some pruning. I have one on the east side of my house that took off to become quite huge, but it is a good neighbor and great mixer. Michele's friend posted pictures on the blog a while back of her beautiful sambucus, too.

Wonderful plant selection and so sad about the trees! Roguchi and Lavon are now on my must-have list.

Great setting and great plants! Your trillium are beautiful and so healthy. Too bad they are also tasty!

The park-like setting, mature shrubs, and large drifts of plants are a pleasure to view.

I think that the multi-colored, repeated mounding forms along the front walkway are so beautiful!

A textural and colorful delight for the eyes, especially on a deceptive 64° January day that makes it feel like Spring is around the corner!

congrats on your scavenging success! starting seeds is another great budget conscious way to get loads of great plants.

I agree! The wonderful fence and great use of found objects help to make your garden a winner!

The blue flowering bush is labeled as a vitex on his houzz page. Very beautiful and dense.

beautiful. love that artemisia.

Night and Day! What a difference.

Thanks for putting together a great "birthday" tribute, Michelle! Quite a collection of inspiring gardens!

Thanks for sharing your garden and your encouraging story and the blessing you received in your new liver! That is awesome. Cool garden. I admire all the work you do, digging and storing tubers and moving plants in and out. As much as I love cannas and colocasias, I just am too lazy to dig and replant! I don't give my musa basjoo any extra care here in Columbus, which is a bit south of you, but I bet you have more reliable snow cover. I just let them freeze and mulch themselves, and so far they keep coming back.

Plant Delights nursery has a large selection of tropical amorphophallus and a couple of marginally hardy ones. Amorphophallus konjac is listed as hardy to zone 6; maybe not hardy enough for Michigan. When I was a kid, I grew one in a pot in zone 4, but you definitely would NOT want one blooming in your house.
Wittyone: your screen name is aptly chosen! My wife would agree with your suspicion of certain male predilections.

Very sculptural. I bet it is a great combination with your hostas when it is in leaf as well.

So heartbroken for you all. Thanks for sharing the beautiful photos as a reminder that there is still beauty and goodness at a time when such darkness rears its ugly head.

The bamboo insert on your fence is so cool and what a great idea to put the cobalt ceramic piece with what looks like heuchera caramel.

such a nice combination of plants and objects. i love the giant miscanthus by the gate.

beautiful hillside, great combos, and great photos!

Lush, dense, and beautiful! The day deer move in to my garden would be the day before I moved into a condo with no yard......

what a great garden and stonework nestled in a picturesque setting! I love living in town but am so envious of this type of garden setting! Do you have problems with deer? Your hostas look uneaten.

The redbud arch is such a great idea. Really nice!

Love that water feature. How long have you had your lady slipper? I've tried several times but they quickly peter out. Trying again with a frosch hybrid to see if I can keep it alive!

Beautiful tapestry of colors.

Impressive and admirable! i've never heard of chamaedaphne either. Very cool. Looking forward,to tomorrow's photos. Happy Thanksgiving!

Beautiful. Your stone steps are amazing.

Great style. Thanks for the article links. Those containers are awesome in the apparently upcoming article; both the pots and the plants.

Really nicely done! I especially love the views looking into the woods in autumn and winter. The article "dry stream bed does double duty" is one whose photos I have memorized and by which I have been inspired as well!

So beautiful and what a great setting! How geat to catch the moment in time when all of those monarchs were on the liatris!

You are definitely a star, Jan! Beautiful. It was fun to go back through the other posts, too. Here's the thing: When is someone going to do some genetic engineering to make a cold-hardy bird-of-paradise plant?!

Such an improvement! It serves the purpose of rest for the eye that the grass served, but adds such a great focal point and helps the environment to boot! Looks like you do great work.

I have a suggestion....I love the water feature, especially the view with the spruce in the background, and the rock gardens from yesterday too. It may feel different onsite, but in the photos the gorgeous rock border seems to garrison the water feature and separates it from the landscape. What if those stones were repurposed elsewhere, or artfully integrated into the water feature and among the plants (as is already done) like a talus slope, and leave a clean edge at the lawn so it integrates? Just a thought. I think the yard is great.

Definite case of stone-envy! The path through the miscanthus is great, too.

Beautiful and inspiring! The blood grass in the blue pots is genius!

Always a pleasure to see your beautiful garden and wonderful photos. the shot of the bluebirds on the sumac is awesome!

you've very successfully overcome quite a few gardening obstacles. really great.

Beautiful!

Beautiful, as well as an informative post. The heuchera with the stone is a great combo. I had meant to comment last time you shared your garden that I actually love clover in the lawn! Thanks for sending in more pics.

well, I was ready for a fall visit to Montana until I saw the icicles in the last photo! Really beautiful! Especially love the birch? trees.

Wow! Beautiful garden and beautiful photos. Inspiring.

Really, really lovely. I love the use of some of my favorite heuchera for nice foliage focal points. I, too, meander through the garden thinking about how to make maintenance easier and easier. Great solutions.

Quite an artist! I think the close ups are really great!

cwheat100:Good eye and memory on the plant names. I had already forgotten the name of the heucherella and I've only had it a few weeks! And remember, I take the photos and submit the photos, so you only see what I want you to see. There are plenty of not-so-nice parts of my yard. In progress!
kershawgirl; If you click on the first 'here' in Michelle's intro, it will take you to the first time my garden was on the blog and there is a photo of the entire sandstone column. The first two characters are peace and level, which I think together mean peaceful. I have not been able to find out what the third character is.
Thanks to all for letting me share.

Most of my coleus are pass-along plants, so I don't know their names. The orange one looks like "Sedona" to me, but I'm not sure.

The elfin thyme seems to be the best performer for me. Wooly thyme goes great guns, rots, and then comes back, as do some of the others. Pressure washing. Hmmm. One more thing to add to the list! :) When I did the front hill, The rock hardscaping was the framework. I planted some things as I worked, others after the rock-work was done. But my soil is very heavy, not sandy.

Wonderful textures, colors and combinations. Makes me want to go out and spend time in the garden instead of work. Your artist's eye for composition and juxtaposition really shows. I like your art, too. Somewhat alien, yet familiar enough to not be disturbing; like those wild, far-out deep sea creatures. Thanks for sharing and congrats on your success.

Your garden is so exhuberant and inviting! Love the plants and combinations. Somehow I missed the first post. Well done.

Those are some happy annuals! Did you guys get frost this week? We came close. It would have been sad because I love the crowded exuberance of overgrown annuals this time of year.

beautiful. Your commitment has certainly paid big dividends!

Really nice. Those crazy, flying begonias are so perfect in your scroll-y plant hanger.

So picturesque! Beautiful layers of texture and color. Is it under-planted with woodland Spring ephemerals?

Great use of space. Love the use of the bamboo, especially in the arbor. The stone-covered water vessel is really cool.

Very artistic shots of a great garden!

loads of fun colors and textures. great vistas. cool house. room for more garden beds. what more could you ask for? maybe fewer deer......

stunning! great plant palette and cool stones, door, and art. thanks for sharing.

very cool. great plants with great pots!

great collection of coleus. they have become one of my favorite annuals. great garden in a hostile climate!

Definitely a feel-good garden. much more inviting than a putting green!

Just beautiful, as usual. I especially love the photo of the blue ceramic globe with the hosta, both as garden and photograph!

great water feature and that is the coolest millstone i have ever seen!

love the focus on trees and shrubs. great palette.

I love the stonework, the japanese lanterns and basins, and the pruned shrubs/trees. A wonderful (but not slavish) nod to japanese gardening. Very tranquil.

Delightful, Michelle and glad to hear that you are on the mend. Great plant combinations. I've started noting all of your photo credits in the magazine and you have a great eye for capturing details. Your close-up photos are art. Coleus-canna-sweet potato is my favorite. Who knew that those plain-grandma's-plants (coleus and coral bells) would become a modern day kaleidoscope of colors and choices?

Get well Michelle! Really enjoying the series on the botanical garden. Really great!

Wonderful! Especially the wheelbarrow. It is a scree garden on wheels. No need for vertical elements there. Beth Chatto's gravel garden book comes to mind. Thanks for sharing!

Wow. Beautiful and inviting. I wonder if I could get several dump truck loads of dirt to make a big hill in my flat back yard, into which I could build a grotto like this..........

All this in five years? Amazing. Is the salmon-colored maple one of the acer pseudoplatanus cultivars? I'd love to know more about it, especially what it looks like as the season progresses. Thanks for sharing.

Lauren Springer's The Undaunted Garden was my garden bible for years. One of the few gardening books that I actually read as well as look at the pictures. Even though she gardens in Colorado, it was very relevant to gardening in the midwest with a few tweaks! Gorgeous blog, by the way!

So beautiful. Lauren Springer's book taught me long ago that foliage really has to carry the garden, however in these photos it is the main event!

Looks to me like you did a great job of complimenting instead of overwhelming the beautiful stone work; great plant choices. I would love to see it in a year or two. Enjoyed all of your designs on your website, Jay, as well as your collection of inspirational photos. Thanks for sharing and inspiring.

Lovely, personal, and obviously a loved home and garden. Kudos and thanks for sharing and for the supplemental information. Indoor/outdoor carpet in the kitchen? Hmmm... :)

So, it's not a gardening comment (great retaining wall; what a difference from before and after!) but I couldn't help but notice the transformation from a white clapboard house to a cedar shake covered house. What a transformation. Is there a fine homebuilding blog where you could post the transformation of your home?! Beautiful.

Looks like Poncirus trifoliata, a hardy orange, to me.

Awesome. How enormous is your front yard? And the garden is only two years old? I also think the cedar fence is just genius. Really great and so much better than turf! Coleus have really come into their own these days. What a great annual that can easily be overwintered indoors.

Wonderful and restful. Great combination of various textures and various greens that really work!

Duranta erecta 'Gold Mound'. It's been in that same pot for several years and responds well to hard pruning. Great (not hardy) container plant!

Vojt :) common mistake! It is lavender spilling onto the path; I can't remember which variety, but it does well here. There is a spring photo of this path at its most colorful on a previous GPOD-January 27th. It hardly looks like the same path, but it is!

WOW! You seem to have really achieved balance and integration between the art and the garden.

So floral, and not a flower in sight! A delightful combination of textures and colors. I am with Annek regarding the blog name. That's what my wife calls my online plant shopping and perusing...Very similar the the California gardeners that call themselves 'hortisexuals'!

Beautiful peonies, beautiful garden, beautiful setting, great photos! Thanks for sharing another season in your garden.

I absolutely LOVE your garden. You have so many little garden treasures to boot; the anemonella is gorgeous (I've killed mine); your trillium is amazing (I've had two flowers in 7 years); lovely little corydalis (have killed more than I can count); and etoile rose is my favorite clematis (still going strong!). KUDOS!

Sumptuous! Great sculpture, too! Gazing balls have never been in my repertoire, but now I must have a purple glass one to set in with some golden foliage! Great choice! Do continue to share your other garden rooms, please.

Really great transformation. I love the views from the patio. I have chain link fence on two sides of my yard, and I just covered them up by attaching rolled bamboo fencing to the chain link. Cali Bamboo has some photos and how-to pages on their website. I think it would look great with your 'tropicals'!

Wow, wow, wow! Not only are you as nice as pie, but your garden and plant choices are beautiful. I have to disagree about the stones and waterfalls looking natural. I think they are beautiful works of art; beautiful stones, carefully placed, carefully chosen. Not contrived-but evidence of the creator's care and artistic eye! I am so jealous! Thanks for sharing!

A beautiful specimen, great stonework to boot! I, too, would like to see more of the patio and garden! 'black lace' has performed so much better for me than either "black beauty' or 'Sutherland's Gold'. A nice bonus is that when I coppice it in spring, I stick the cut twigs in the ground and about half of them root.

Wonderful, Michelle! Thanks for stepping up to the plate! Love the cool, inviting patio and arbor. Great fountain. I see many of my plant-friends in your garden, too. I am dying to see a picture of as much of the japanese maple that can be photographed. It really does look massive! Kudos!

AMAZING!

Beautiful and inviting! Like meander1, I am captivated by the geranium and am crushed to see that it is a zone9-er. One reference said it is monocarpic. Do you keep replanting it or has it performed as a perennial for you? Just a magical plant!

Beautiful garden; quality photos! I think, even at peak, meadow-type gardens can look 'weedy'. Yours is just beautiful. An airy, colorful delight. And the peonies and iris look amazing. My double peonies didn't bloom this year-they started to open and turned brown. Glad yours were stunning!

Thanks for your kind comments! Lots of people have joked with me about designing their gardens. I have so much admiration for garden designers because I just can't do it. My secret to success in the garden is: Step 1. Buy what I like. Step 2. Plant everything way too close together. Step 3. Kill half of everything I buy. Step 4. Divide what survives. Step 5. Go back to Step 1!

Idyllic! So much interest packed into those borders, and a wonderful setting. Thanks for sharing.

Beautiful peonies, home, and I love the big stones (of course!). I echo the tree peony comments here. I have a 15 year old tree peony (yachiyo-tsubake, my user portrait) and it has been completely undemanding; dug up, put in a holding bed during some construction early on, and then put back. Likes being on the east side of our porch. Some morning sun. The flowers are smaller now that it has easily 100 flowers, but still a stunning spring time treat!

Idyllic garden. This is the time of year that I am late to work everyday because of strolling in the garden. This garden could get me fired because I would never show up! The primitive-looking japanese lantern is amazing.

Beautiful garden and water feature. Great plant choices. Beautiful photos to boot! The stone table fills me with envy! Thanks for sharing.

Really beautiful. Amazing setting and it looks like a garden that will continue to grow in beauty every year!

Visited Kingwood for the first time last year. Very beautiful, well maintained, and the small shop sells a wonderful variety of interesting plants.

Stunning. I'd never want to go inside. Your foliage-focus is very successful. I bet that the garden looks amazing all year round.

Thanks for sending in the before picture. Great choice! I think your foreground garden and beautiful natural backdrop really compliment each other. Neither alone would be as beautiful!

Wonderful, and a very nice read with which to start the morning at work.

Beautiful and picturesque! I am so envious of your garden setting. My garden setting is an alley, power lines and poles, garbage cans and neighbors' garages! Looks like a professional design instead of a filled in pool.

Beautiful. Great stonework. Do you plant anything in or with the creeping phlox? I've always avoided it as a one (short) season plant. But, OH, what a season!!

Wow!

Great garden and hardscaping. My bet that the bananas are Musa basjoo; definitely hardy in Ohio (at least for the last 6 years). I expect my banana plants will be really tall this year with the mild winter we have had. After colder winters they come up from side shoots. After milder winters, last year's "trunks" grow back from the ground as if they had never frozen to the ground.

Beautiful. Maybe a little off topic but I have to comment how beautifully composed each photo is and the great quality of the photos, even at a low resolution. Obviously you have art training or professional photography experience? Thanks for sharing.

Stunning perfection. Wonderful sense of composition and plant selection. Is that awesome stone and copper(?) structure a gate? How does it work? Michelle, thanks for adding the links to the past posts! Incredible!

I, too, was smitten with the blue flowered shrub. It looks like it is Eranthemum nervosum/Eranthemum pulchellum. Now, where to find it and can it take being grown in a container...... :)

What a wonderful setting in which to garden! Lovely. What is the dense conifer behind the tree and bench in the front patio photo?

Great garden in a beautiful setting. Love the waterfall. I am most envious of your woodland garden and ephemerals!

Great plant collection; Beautiful garden. Who needs a yard? (Ok, I know some people do,and when our kids were little we did). Does it give you a little perverse thrill, like it does me, when something dies and you have room to shoe-horn something new in? Kudos to a job well done!

"Gradually filled in"??? This is BEAUTIFULLY composed. Great plant choices.

Amazing! Incredible stonework! I am jealous of everything except the marauding deer!

Stunning! Too often I plant 'groups of one, drifts of two' and miss out on the great visual impact of a stream of plants. The artemisia is out of this world.

My shade loving plants are mostly on the north side of the house, the east side, and the front hill under the cherry tree. The side yard pictured today is a weird "valley" exposure, shaded by houses on either side, with full sun during the middle of the day. (My wife corrected me that we live in an "urban" neighborhood, not "suburban"!) Many thanks to fine gardening and Michelle Gervais for posting my photos on the blog. Too much fun and thanks for all of the comments. I learned that you can turn someone in their 50's into a six-year-old by telling them it is their turn for show-and-tell! I look forward to more inspiration from this blog! Now, what to do with the rest of the back yard? :)

A very Happy Birthday to Michelle! The big pink spikes under the dogwood are from a green-leaved heuchera whose name I have completely lost. I've had various cultivars of heuchera grow poorly or die right next to other varieties that are thriving. When I've had them in too sunny and too dry a spot, they plump up when moved to light shade that is not too dry. I've noticed that they seem to be sensitive to having too much nursery soil left around their roots in my heavy soil, so if I purchase one I virtually bare-root it (along with pretty much anything else I bring home in a pot.) When they get big and woody, I dig them up in Spring or Fall, chop them to pieces and plunk the pieces back in the ground. I mail ordered the double trillium and blood root from England about a decade ago. I'm sure I've seen them offered online here in the states more recently. Regarding Trillium, I am a trillium failure; killed more than have survived. I have T. erectum and T. sessile that are limping along, and poor 'Snowbunting' hasn't bloomed for years. It is multiplying slowly, but staying small. Any Trillium expert advice would be welcome!

I've gotten lots of suggestions about how to avert rock thieves. I like the snake sign idea. The fact of the matter is that I can never leave anything alone and am planning on replacing some of the smaller rocks on the east side with *much* heavier rocks (mjw must have read my mind!) The wrap-around porch is, hands-down, the best feature of the house!

The hills are north facing slopes. The eastern side gets pretty much full sun. The western side with the hostas is under an enormous cherry tree (think light shade, tons of rotting cherries on the ground in late june....) so it gets some morning sun and some evening sun. I added a little store-bought, generic compost. I also turned the sod upside down to increase the organic matter in the soil. Our back yard, except for the gravel garden, has a long, long way to go (I'd give the project a number in the 100's instead of 500's, Michelle!).

The gravel garden is about four years old in the final photo. Regarding kzoocookie's comments about weeds, it seems to me that *everything* loves to self-sow in the pea-gravel mulch that is over the 'dirty' gravel. It is sort of a weeding nightmare....

Well this is certainly fun! I really don't which I love more; rocks or plants. I guess I would say it is the combination of both that I love. My favorite rocks are in the front yard which should be up tomorrow. High Country Gardens has great stuff; always have a wish list to try new things. Unfortunately the ugly gravel parking pad off the alley is what it is; project number 587 on my very own 'this old house'!

One of my favorites. I've had young plants throw up flower scapes almost 6 feet tall. The elegant vase shape of the plants show particularly well when kept divided.

Beautiful, and I'm pretty sure that is a salvia, not a lupine. :)

Flowers don't look quite right to me for Silene acaulis. Is it possible that it is Dianthus simulans? It tends to mound this way. Great photo!