A Blanket of Flowers

There are not many truly red flowers in my garden apart from the poppies. However, a few years ago I found the red flowering Gaillardia and brought three of them home. This is gaillardia x grandiflora "Burgundy", or more commonly known as Blanket Flower.

There is a good variety of blanket flowers available. I tried a few of them only to find out that they are very short lived - at least in my garden. A yellow variety "Sunrise sunset" has completely disappeared in one location, but does pretty well in another part in my garden. But this red one has been performing really well and is a real stunner. Last year I bought two more which to my surprise produced longer stalks which is simply lovely.

Bees love them.

They do well both in humid and dry conditions, but generally do not need much water once established. It seems to be the perfect choice for my low water garden.

They start as small flowers with tiny petals that eventually open to the stunning flower you see in the top picture.

They keep for quite a while, feeding bees and other nectar loving insects. But their beauty is not over when eventually the flowers fade and the petals fall. On the contrary. They develop a big round seed head that is quite spectacular on its own.

I am planning to plant some more of these gaillardias in a different part of the garden and see how they do there. Gardening involves so much trial and error, but it's always exciting.

The Garden in May

Marguerite Daisy "Summit Dark Pink"

May is a beautiful month in the garden. After rather shy early spring months the days are finally warming up and the garden is exploding with color. The soil is not yet dried out as it will be very soon and pretty cool nights keep some of the moisture. Just like every spring I had to pull out some plants that didn't make it through our mild winter, and that means there are spots in the garden that need to be filled. Several trips to my favorite nursery were in order. Ah, a gardener always finds space in the garden for new plants...

The California poppies - our state flower - always draw the attention. They are such happy flowers. Who can resist this good-mood color?

 Eschscholzia californica

They turn up everywhere - they are annuals but very busy (and successful) re-seeders. They come in different shades of oranges and there are even pale yellow ones that look rather delicate (they are not!). When they appear next to other plants they can create stunning color combinations - like with these gaillardias (blanket flower):

Gaillardia "Burgundy"

The Spanish Lavender is always the first of the lavenders to bloom, either in pink or in purple. The pink one even blooms in winter, it never seems to stop. Unfortunately I have lost the tag to it and can't tell you which one it is.

Spanish Lavender "Otto Quast"

A neighbor once gave me some seeds of the lovely Nigella damascena, also known as Love-in-a-Mist, after I had told her how much I like them in her garden. I sowed them and then forgot about them. They turned up in the spring of last year, re-seeded, and now I have so many more. They are simply lovely.

Love-in-a-Mist

Since this is a low-water, drought-tolerant, deer resistant (for the most part), mainly native plants garden the Matilija Poppies are a must. It is easy to plant them, but not that easy to grow them. Some gardeners actually plant three of them so that they will end up with one surviving because so many of them just die. I had tried to grow them in the Brookdale house where they always died. I gave them one last chance here, planted only one (always the optimist) and got lucky. The thing is - once you get to the point that they're established they grow and grow and grow.... and turn up in other parts of the garden since they spread by rhizomes. A plant only for the big garden and a complete stunner.

Matilija Poppy with Verbascum "Southern Charm"

Talking about poppies, let's not forget the "real" poppy, the Papaver. Up to last year I had so many of them that I was afraid they would take over completely, so I ripped most of them out before they went to seed. This spring I have far less that I will let go to seed again. They are way to beautiful to get rid of them completely. Some of the people who regularly walk by my garden (and always stop to chat when I'm out there) actually told me that they miss my poppy garden...

This is a favorite spot in a shadier part of the garden (thanks to a huge Blue Elderberry):

The Chinese Foxglove in the back have multiplied, the flowering currant has become quite big, the hollyhocks are doing okay after I sprayed them with "Liquid Fence" to discourage the roaming deer to have them for dinner all the time, the smoke bush finally grows in (it experienced the same fate as the hollyhocks) and everywhere - and I mean everywhere - there are wild Forget-Me-Nots. Just recently I moved the birdbath - two bigger terracotta pots put on top of each other upside down and a terracotta saucer on top - into this space and the birds seem to like it in this spot much more than in the old one. It's more protected I guess.

Rehmannia Chinese Foxglove 

Forget-Me-Not

One last plant - this one I discovered two years ago and planted it out of curiosity. It has become a true showstopper. It is growing like mad right now and the flowers are starting to perk up. This is Salvia sclarea "Piemont". It pretty much thrives on neglect, and if I'm not mistaken I see little ones popping out of the soil - they readily re-seed. The erect flower spikes, once they're open, are two shades of lavender and white. Stunning.

With the exception of the very first photo all these images are from my huge front garden. The backyard is still a work in progress. Maybe - I still have to think about that - I'll show some pictures from there as well. It has a blanket of weeds (aka "lawn") that I'm slowly sheet mulching into something more beautiful.

Some flowers in the front try to escape through the redwood fence that the Geek and I built five years ago.

Nepeta, Catmint

Can you imagine that it all started out with this almost six years ago (after the sheet mulching was complete)? From this...

... to this:

 If you want to know how I did the sheet mulching you can read about it here.

Scene & Story - September 2017

The month of September was very unusual for me in that regard that I didn't take a lot of photos. I was so busy with work, especially the beginning of the school year at the German School, that I simply didn't have the time and leisure to grab my camera and go on a photo excursion.

But just a couple days ago I put my macro lens on my Canon 7D and headed outside in the garden to see what was left so late in the season. I had thought that my Spanish Lavender still looked pretty good, and when I turned my camera to it this Fiery Skipper landed on its flower. This butterfly is a rather jumpy little guy who doesn't sit anywhere for a long time, but I was lucky to capture him (or her?) on a few images. This year I have seen quite a big amount of them as well as other butterflies and lots of bees which tells me that my garden is a sought after habitat for them with just the right plants for them to survive. I have mainly native plants and a very few "water suckers" in an otherwise low water garden. By now I am at a point where I offer a refuge not only for butterflies and bees, but there are also a lot of birds who enjoy the nectar and the seeds of the flowers.

I am joining Sarah and León for Scene and Story.