Strip between driveways, Part 1

Recovering lost posts

 This is the Virginia Creeper and the Autumn Joy Sedum, and the berries of the orange berries of the Mountain Ash tree.  The dry looking branches are the Rose of Sharon shrub that has lost most of its leaves.  This is about 25 feet of the 5 foot wide strip between my neighbor and I on the west side of our garden.

 This is another photo of the Virginia Creeper in the summer time before I clipped it back.  It looks vaguely like an octopus.  You see the driveways on each side.  The spikey looking leaves are the yucca.

 This is the Virginia Creeper in early spring before it leafed out.  You see the St. Johns Worte that has been clipped back and so is looking rather brown.  It will soon have nice green leaves.  The spikey looking leaves are the yucca again.  And the mound is the very good plant; the Autumn Joy Sedum.

This is the golden mass of St. John's wort in bloom in the summer.  This is a very vigorous plant.  The driveways keep it contained, but it it moving up the driveway a bit every year.  It is easy care and puts on a good show when in bloom and looks pretty good in green leaves too.  Too bad it doesn't have good fall color.

 a close up of the St. John's worte blossom.  A very photogenic plant.

 This is moving up the driveway and a bit closer to the house.  The shrub in bloom is the Rose of Sharon.  Lovely blossoms, but a rather straggley bush otherwise.  The color and bloom time of the Autumn Joy Sedum and the Rose of Sharon make this an interesting spot of color in late summer.  The silver mounding plant was very good for quite a few years but got old and too big for its space so I too it out.

 The yucca in black and white.

 The yucca in bloom just before the Sedum comes out in pink.  This yucca blooms every second year.  I find that if I take better care of it, it will reward me with more of these lovely tall sparkling white spikes of big bell shaped blossoms.  another very good, tough plant.

 Just in front of the Mountain Ash tree is the kniphofia or torch lily, and in front of the torch lily is the lamium or lambs ears.  Both in bloom and the green of the Mountain Ash for a backdrop.  The lamium spreads everywhere around the garden if I let it.  The leaves are  soft and fuzzy silver. The bees love the purple, rather ugly blooms.

 More kniphofia and the mountain ash tree where you can see a bit of the difference in the forms of the leaves.

 The kniphofia with the hedge for the backdrop, and daisies that spread everywhere in the garden.  They can be controlled with a little bit of effort when weeding.  The purple at the edge of the photo is dames rocket or hisperis matronalis.  It seeds about the garden, also.  It is a short lived perennial or a bi-annual.  It looks good in big clumps of bloom, so I let it grow in the flower borders.  It seems to be in bloom for most of the summer. 

Behind and in front of the Rose of Sharon, and the Mountain Ash, there is arabis and the blue of the grape hyacinths or muscari.   They bloom in the early spring.  The arabis lasts quite long and makes a huge space of white.  It is evergreen and low growing ground cover.  A very good plant.  It wraps around the plants and looks really good against the green of the hedge and under the daffodils when they come into bloom.   This brings us up to where the tall cedar hedge makes a living fence of green between our properties.
I am doing these posts about the garden along the driveway to link to the description of the garden rooms page that I am creating on my web page.  Everything on my old web page gets done at a snails pace, and in a very old fashioned manner.  I like it that way.  I really don't like when I have to up date this or that every second minute.
We have had lots of rain, and some high winds over the past week.  But the temperatures were up to 17 one day and near the same for the rest of the time.  I had taken my orange trees into the garage when we had a light frost just before this warm spell, but have them out on the patio again.  The leaves have all fallen off the front tree and are raked, mulched and most of them put on the back of the woodland garden, over cardboard.  I hope this smothers the blue bells.

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Posted By Blogger to My Garden at 12/11/2014 05:35:00 PM