Go and enter your own, or just vote for mine. Please?

Here are my entries.

They allow you to upload as much as 10 at a time, but when I tried to do 10 it got busted, one file got corrupted, and a bunch didn’t load. Do them one at a time to be safe.

Related posts:

1. Baby Robin Photo Diary
2. Pictures of My Garden
3. Turning a Garden Bed Down for Winter

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair –

The bees are stirring -birds are on the wing –

And Winter slumbering in the open air,

Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!

And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,

Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,

Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.

Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,

For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!

With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll:

And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?

Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,

And Hope without an object cannot live.

Remember all, winter can’t last forever. Are your green thumbs feeling itchy yet?

Work Without Hope by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Related posts:

1. Spring Gardening Tasks

1. Avoid Straight Lines and Even Numbers

Your garden bed should avoid any and all straight lines. If your bed is a foundation planting the back of the bed may be straight because it borders the house, but the front better have a curve to it. Pickpockets and magicians move their hands in arcs to distract us because our eyes cannot follow curved lines as well as straight lines. So when you use a curved line in your garden design you’re forcing the eye to slow down and follow along it rather than skip to the end, you’re telling eyes to stop and smell the roses so to speak. It makes the garden more interesting. Long sweeping curves look far better than straight lines, one of the most boring garden beds you’ll ever see is a flat straight 3 foot wide section along the foundation of a house. In a formal geometic garden straight lines can work, but such gardens also tend to require fulltime staffs of landscapers to maintain their precision pruning, they aren’t the style most of us want or can afford.

Even numbers, or planting things in matching pairs, should also be avoided, as they are easier for our brain to add up and categorize. Instead plant things in odd groups such as 3 or 7, it feels more natural and is more visually interesting.

2. Plant in Many Colors

Flowers are transient, foliage is forever. Every garden bed should have atleast one plant that has foliage that is red or purple, one that has golden or yellow foliage, and one that has silver or blue foliage. The more shades you can add the better, bonus points for black foliage.

In the red/purple foliage category there is barberry (in the pictures), purple smoke bush, ‘forest pansy’ redbud (a wonderful purple leaved tree seen in a picture here), various heuchera or heucherella (in one of the pictures), red maples (in one of the pictures), some ornamental cherries, some sedums, and some types of hardy hibiscus.

In the yellow/gold category there is golden privet (which smells wonderful and honey bees love, in a picture), eunonymous, lots of hostas, some heucheras or heucherellas, golden barberry, some arborvitae, some other evergreen hybrids, some sedums, and lysimachia.

In the blue/silver category is the well known blue spruce, but there are many varieties that are bluer than what the average person is familiar with, really striking. All types of juniper (my favorite are upright narrow varieties, in pictures, or groundcover varieties), some irises, artemisia, various other conifer cultivars, some hostas, and blue fescue.

In the black category there is “Black Lace” Sambucus, and black mondo grass, as well as a type of bamboo.

3. Plant atleast one of each of the follow…

• A tall ornamental grass. For northern climates this generally means miscanthus, but in the south you have other species to choose from. Many people overlook grasses because they can be expensive and seem plain at the nursery, plus they think they have a lawn full of grass so why need one in a bed? But tall clumping ornamental grasses provide a feathery texture that creates interest with the wind like no other plant can. Only in a full shade bed, where most would not grow well, would I recommend not planting atleast one.
• An evergreen. You’ll want interest in winter, and evergreens provide structure to a garden bed. Garden beds can’t be all flowers, then need structure and anchors, foundation, you get that with trees and shrubs, and let one of them be evergreen. I really like dwarf pines, but there are lots of options.
• A tree or standard-form shrub with an exposed trunk. Foliage and flowers are not the only part of a plant worth showing, bark trunks provide interest all their own with interesting colors and textures. A standard-form shrub is a shrub that has been grafted on top of a trunk to resemble a tree, so you can plant one of those, or an actual tree (one that has an exposed trunk, ie not a spruce). It doesn’t have to be a large tree, but you need something that’ll have interesting bark one day.

Follow those simple guidelines and you will create more visually interesting garden beds. One final fourth rule, if you can afford it, is something inorganic. A large boulder can be invaluable to a garden bed, or use stone or brick as your edging material. A scultural item can work as well, be it made of wood such as driftwood (technically organic I guess), stone, ceramic, bronze, glass, concrete, whatever. A large container works here as well, a container a 5 year old could hide in, that big.

Related posts:

1. Edible Ornamentals
2. Pictures of My Garden
3. My Plant Wishlist

Click the picture to see it bigger. The two smaller beds are brand new, I’ve got two dwarf apples and a paw paw tree planted in them, as well as some vegetables. In the big circle center bed I’ve got a tanyosho pine surrounded by alliums for the time being. Later I will plant squash there, as the squirrels instructed me last year apparently it is a good place for squash.

I’ve got a red maple in the small circle coming up out of a bed of frothing yellow lysimachia ground cover. Then within the bigger bed itself I’ve got an upright blue juniper, some red barberries, a black lace elderberry, lilies, daylilies, yucca, and in bloom all over you see carpet phlox.

Way up by the road you can see the pre-bloom ditchlilies I used to fill the space between the sidewalk and the road.

Next year or this fall, whenever I can afford it, I hope to put in a stone patio between the two larger beds in that S-shaped strip of grass. Something informal with a low groundcover going through the cracks.

Related posts:

1. Pictures of My Garden
2. Save Paul James, Gardening by the Yard Cancelled, HGTV == Bad
3. Butternut Squash & Squirrels

This is a picture of the bed that curves along my back fence. I call it my “Hot Colors Bed” because it is all yellow & orange.

Here is a picture of my side garden. This is where most of my daylilies are, and it forms the north border of my property starting from near the sidewalk to the back of my garage where my fence starts.

Related posts:

1. Pictures of My Front Yard
2. Updates: Garden Labels and Ditch Lilies by the Road
3. Three Simple Tips for a Beautiful Ornamental Garden Bed