Yesterday, I read the post titled
"What's Still Blooming in Your Garden?" on the blog, My Northern Garden, and it inspired me to post one last garden tour of the season. As you can see our warmer than average October has still left me with lots of blooming annuals.
The back borders and the west end of the garden have all been chopped down and cleaned up. I also took out all the floating island planters from the pond in an effort to eliminate some of that nasty frog population. The Tamarack (American Larch) tree is starting to change to it's golden color and soon it's needles will fall.
The salvia hummingbird garden is still in full bloom but I have not seen a hummer since October 5th.
Speaking of seeing things, Marigene asked in yesterday's post if I saw the monarch migration (butterfly covered trees) this year. Sadly, the answer is no - according to my records it is always around August 26-28th and this year I was in northern MN decorating baby bee's nursery during that time period.
The front of the cabin is especially pretty with some fuschia colored mums, purple asters, flowering kale & gem marigolds.
I've talked about my 3 favorite annuals before...victoria blue salvia (the blue spike still blooming in most of these photos), lisanthus (still blooming) and the gem marigolds. Below, along the path to the gazebo you can see all 3 varieties...the yellow blossoms of lemon gem in the foreground, the orange blossoms of tangerine gem in the middle and the reddish orange blossoms of the red gem (closest to the gazebo).
Gem marigolds grow into a good sized mound, their foilage is finely cut and the blossoms are the size of my thumbnail. The profuse flowering of the plant more than makes up for the size of the blossom for impact in the landscape. I love to plant these along the paths because when you brush them as you walk by you are rewarded with a wonderful citrusy scent (not as strong as a normal marigold). I'm lucky enough to have most of my plants self seed from year to year but this year I also bought packets of seed from
Territorial Seed when I discovered they had the red gem seed which I haven't found locally.
The beds on the side of the garage are still blooming with victoria white & blue salvia, imagination verbena & petunias which are all self seeded.
The path to the front of the barn was still blooming with marigolds, petunias & verbena but I pulled the plants out after I keep tripping on their overgrowth while putting away summer yard stuff for the winter. The herbs are still growing strong as well as a few late Polish Spirit clematis blossoms.
The back of the barn has asters, gallardia & some rudebeckia still blooming.
The front rose garden is still blooming along with scattered annuals...
and the front door bed still has color from mums, autumn joy sedum and annuals.
So that's the tour :) I leave you with some mosaics of some of the individual blossoms I enjoyed yesterday.
