Gardening in June

The bench and the thyme circle.  This area is ok.  The thyme needs a bit of weeding.  The edging is good from last year. 

This is the boxwood hedge along the top of the front garden.  It was so much easier to do this year with my cordless, rechargeable hedge trimmer.  I only need to do a bit of trimming by hand.

This is the small honeysuckle pilea hedge along Parmar's 5 ft strip of grass beside their driveway.  Behind the little hedge I have started a cedar hedge that goes from the top of this 'inner garden down to the California lilac near the bottom of the 'inner' garden.

 A few of the rock plants in the little rockery of the 'inner garden' at the front.  This little area was expanded a bit after I removed the half barrel and the tub.  I now have pleiones, a couple of lilies, and a few other choice plants in the new little rockery area.  The flat rocks between these two little rockeries needs to be weeded, as the clover seems to be back.   Today I removed a small variegated leaf plant from here, as this plant was going to be too big for the area.  The daphne that I got at the VIRAGS show and sale this spring is doing fine here, and so is the blue poppy.    I have a wonderful little perennial snapdaagon in white and about 8 inches high that is spreading and is covered with flowers.  .. Pictures of this little rockery area tomorrow maybe.

These daisies are the big show at the front right now.  There is the street, the 8 - 10 ft grass border (with the crocuses)  and then there is a 4 ft wide strip with a shrub that is covered with white just after the crocuses are finished, a laverta (pink) that is going to get big, the purple plum tree, a lavender, lemon balm, some dutch iris, with thyme and pussy toes under the larger plants.   When the daisies are finished blooming I will cut them down to ground level, being careful not the cut the Michaelmas daisies or the achellia.  The lemon balm will also get cut down to ground level and a lot of it dug out.  Next to this strip is a small ratty honeysuckle pilea hedge that I should just remove.. and maybe replace with boxwood cuttings.  Next to this small hedge is the big cedar hedge.  The cedar hedge is made so that it has 2 rectangular beds towards the street side and the middle rectangle is on the inner garden and is where the bench sits.  The two rectangles on the outside have peonies, montebretia, hollyhocks and a few other plants in them.  The rectangle by Parmar's side is infested with blue bells and its peonies need to be dug up and replanted in improved soil.. the whole rectangle needs to be cleaned up.  The rectangle by our driveway is doing better as it gets more attention.  I transplanted  a gailardia and a helenium into there a couple of days ago.  Now it should be full and have blooms from summer through to the Fall.  The peonies here are doing better but still need more care.  They are quite tall this year.  I put compost on the bed last year and the plants are thriving on it.

This is the little dry stream that goes from the lantern by the pond towards the deck and under the deck. The stream is made with newspaper layers covered with pea gravel..  I have a nice little moss garden started along this dry stream.  Actually, the moss started by itself.  It is quite lush along behind the steps up to the deck.  There are ferns growing under the steps and I keep the ferns cut back off the moss along the dry stream. I let the lovely welsh poppies grow through the moss and bloom with their delicate yellow flowers.  I am trying to encourage the moss to grow into the little Japanese garden area.  I have a few violets that need to be dug out, but its quite clean from the work of last year.  Today, I clipped back the little variegated shrub and cleaned the ferns off the moss, cleaned up the hellebores a bit, and weeded under the rhodos that border the steps up to the deck, and border the moss / fern garden under the steps.  The plant you see at the top of the photo is a solomon's seal, and is excellent in shade, under the deck. 

This is the small rockery that is along the side of the vegetable garden at the back.  I reset the edging stones and edged the grass. I have several little rockery plants from the VIRAGS show and sale that are doing wonderful well this year.  Last year, the plants I had out there dried and died in the heat wave we had while we were away.  With the volcano ash in the air, I think these little plants should be ok this summer.  They all seem to be well rooted and growing.    There is a small daphne, two little evergreens, a cyclamen for before, and several tiny mounding rock plants.  The lewisias and a lovely little evergreen campanula are there from before, as well.  I spread compost over the pea gravel and shall top up the pea gravel again.  I have only one bag of pea gravel left and will go to Cannor for more, soon.  I have used up the top soil  as well and should get a bag or two more.  Its always good to have some around when you need it.  I have shall need more mushroom manure too.  I have one bag of compost left from my community compost bin guys.  I used two bags of it up on the back gardens and one on the front. 

The pond.  The mermaid is now on top of the waterfall.  The fish survive.  I am not losing water since I slowed down the pump feed to the waterfall.  The lovely purple water iris have buds and the water hawthorn is still blooming.  The water weeds and duckweed seem to keep the water much more clear this year.  We have had rain over the past 10 days so I have only topped up the pond when I was out there transplanting the tomatoes and dahlias and lobelia.    There are 2 tomatoes in the ground next to the strawberries and 3 dahlias in big black pots.  Today, I reseeded the lettuce.  The tomatoes are up, at last.  There is a bit of dill and some spinach and swiss chard.   No room for anything more, as the tomatoes took up quite a lot of space.  They are Yukon Gold and should be good eating.  There are going to be a few strawberries. There are about half a dozen large figs on the tree... so it looks like we might have figs this year.  BUT, I cannot see any yellow plums.  I think the blossoms froze this year.  There are little apples on the tree.  The grape is forming a few clusters also.

This is the old sidewalk that runs partway along behind the garage.  The whole area behind the garage and beside the garage is woodland.  We took out a sumac that was leaning badly in the high winds we had.  Now the rhodo that was near it should do better.  I covered the root area of the rhodo with half a bag of compost and watered it.  I have moved the water tub from the half barrel back here and set it on the stump from the big gum tree that Davey tree took out last year.  I have yellow water iris, some duck weed and under water plant in the tub.  I thought I might like the dragon flies to use this water feature and so have not added fish.  But I might have to add fish, as there are mosquito larvae in there already.  I have begun to clean up the woodland garden with clipping back the germander and I have half of the german irises cleaned up.  The thorn shrub is clipped down and is going to covered with berries.  So pruning is good for this bush.  The woodland is a bit wild.  But this year the dames rocked looked really good with the blue bells.  Both of them running wild over the woodland area.  The Saskatoon berry trees have lots of berries this year.  I see old weird Sheila has broken one of the trees trunks off.  It was hanging over her property, I suppose.  Nasty old baggage.
The compost bin back here is full.  Its been there since the year before we got the community composting service.  I have been adding anything with dirt attached to it, to this bin, rather than put it in the big green bin and have them take away the dirt.  I checked the bottom of my compost bin and there appears to be some nice black compost in there.  I shall need to shovel it out,  when I get time, to make room for more on top.  I would like to empty the garbage bin /compost barrel that I have on the vegetable garden, into this bin so that it composts down.  I will need to empty some out of the bottom to make room for it.
I have finished weeding the violets out of the front garden in the magnolia tree area.  I  transplanted 3 dahlias here.  Removed the daisies also, as there are enough of them out in the front bed.  I added a bag of compost to this area. It did not seem to go very far. I could use at least 2 more bags full here.  The little area is looking better, but still not super.  The design was changed when the round cedars got too big and were mangled when the snow shovellers dumped heaps of snow on them.  I need to rethink this area of plants. I need a taller shrub next to the black bamboo to balance it, maybe.