Long panoramic views are the shots I always aim for and the end product always disappoints. I have no photography skills other than trying, at times unsuccessfully, to hold still when I snap. The wonderful photos on this site are all taken by Alan.
Our “Crazy” and “Front” beds are at their peak. When these blooms fade, there’s not much to look forward to. I like this unplanned grouping of Purple Cone Flower, Joe Pye Weed, Hopi Dye Amaranth, Monarda and Red Smoke Tree. You may notice the orange day lily on the right. Last year I decided to throw a few ditch lilies into this mix and I do not regret it. They are orange, a great color, and they bloom for a long time. I think they are underappreciated plants. And misused. I think they look best integrated into other plantings.

Notice the euphorbia creeping everywhere. This is a great but invasive plant. I like the contrasting effect of the blue foliage and the feathery texture, but I may have to intervene and rip some of it out to give other plants a chance.

Nothing in the Crazy Bed is planned. Plants are hastily thrown in wherever there is space. This often results in noticing later on that small trees or shrubs are planted 2 feet apart. This simply means than one will have to be removed at some point in the future. Nature often times takes care of these problems for me!
One important thing I’ve learned this year is to accept the presence of certain weeds and invasive grasses. The Crazy Bed is full of patches quack grass- the worst possible offender. At the beginning of the season I was hyperventilating over this, thinking that I may need to smother the entire bed and start over. Efforts were made to dig out the worst spots. It is still there and will always be there, but thankfully the interesting plants predominate. And that’s good enough.

When we moved here there was a lone shrub planted in the middle of our circular drive. As we busied ourselves with more pressing projects, by midsummer we had a circle of weeds up to our necks. One ambitious day, the weeds were cleared and a tree and a few perennials were planted. I decided to limit the colors in this bed to shades of pink, orange, and burgundy. I do not do that anywhere else, only limiting my use of golden yellow as a general rule. This bed is at its best in midsummer, when purple coneflowers and day lilies are blooming. Sadly it is not very interesting in other seasons.

Peach day lilies (I don’t know the name of many of our day lilies- can’t keep track of that kind of stuff), purple coneflower, drumstick allium, common milkweed that showed up on its own.

Same plants as above along with barely discernible Terra Cotta Yarrow and Blackberry Lily. The tree is a Profusion Crabapple.

The coneflower have increased nicely over the last few years. I suppose I should do a little thinning in Fall or Spring.

I never knew poppies could grow so well in Iowa – particularly the wispy orange California poppies. I thought they were only suited for drier climates; I was obviously misinformed. And that’s fine by me. I rather like them. I think they are one of my favorite flowers to photograph. Not as flamboyant as sunflowers and not as long standing either. I suppose their short bloom time makes them less ideal garden flowers (if you want lots of long blooms), but this also makes me more appreciative. After the bloom is done the seed pod forms for post-bloom interest. I’ll be sure to add more to this slide show as the seasons continue.

Want to add some poppies to your garden? Not sure if it’s necessary, but we usually sprinkle the seeds toward the end of winter. All the better if it’s snowing a little. The silvery, jagged-leaved seedlings emerge early in the spring.

A new plant combination we have enjoyed this year: Wild Lupine, Mourning Widow Geranium and Perennial Bachelor Buttons.

Mourning Widow also looks good with Spiderwort.

Spiderwort looks fantastic this year. There was a cat fight in the clump pictured below, and it fared ok- better than one of the cats. We are learning that male cats are still territorial, even after being neutered. Peaches, our indoor/outdoor cat, and Doppel, our outdoor cat, spend hours each day staring each other down. We find it’s best to break it up before they get too close. Poor Dops usually loses.

Here’s a close-up of that pink oriental poppy pictured above. We grew this from seed in ’08 and are thrilled that it is still with us. Both pink and red oriental poppies are difficult to grow in Iowa clay- pink being more difficult. They must be started from seed if you want them to come back- in our growing conditions anyway.

Anne sometimes likes to call this the crazy bed. The weeds and grass (and potential snakes in the weeds and grass) drive her crazy at times.  The bed is also home to a haphazard collection of shrubs, flowers and a growing number of trees. It seems to be the go-to bed for items that do not fit in other beds. Most of the trees in the crazy bed are very small at this point. But they too are crazy. Anne plants Redbuds like some people plant tulips — they can be thick. It totally makes sense though (in a crazy way) — the Redbuds are small and can hang out with a lone day lily, a dogwood, large swaths of euphorbia, winecups, primrose, wild mulleins, and dozens of others.

click the image for a much larger view.

I like the crazy bed for it’s unpredictability. Always a new species to be found that I didn’t know existed. Anne says there isn’t much going on there right now, but I say there is always something crazy going on. In time I’m sure this bed will have a new name. Maybe it will become the Redbud bed.

This year the irises were sublime. Too bad we don’t have a wide angle lens to capture the mass effect. Here are a few worth commenting on.

My all time favorite iris. A random purchase at the Green Scenes Annual Plant Sale in Waterloo in ’08. Was not blooming when I bought it. Don’t know it’s name and don’t care. What a color!

Peach iris. I do not know the names of any of the iris I grow. Most are pass along plants.

The 2-toned iris in the foreground came out of a ditch up the road.

This is as much variety as I could capture with our regular lens.

This one starts out black and turns deep purple at the end of its bloom cycle.

I know it rained some in April, and by the looks of our blooms it was a decent amount. Yay, it’s May! Always so much to do in May with cleaning up the garden and building new garden and rearranging old garden, that the blooms sometimes escape capture. They can be missed in our hurry to prepare for the next series of blooms. Anne and I often play the did you see game where someone says, Did you see the species tulip in the bed outside the door? And then someone replies, Yes, it’s awesome! Did you see the little mini-irises next to Buddha? Yes, how about the daffodils down by the bridge? They look great this year.

Images on Flickr

And now as I type this Anne tells me there is a new bulb, a fritillaria, open next to Jane Magnolia in the front bed. I’ll need to check it out in the morning. Sure enough, there it is.

Anne often wins at this game.

It may be cold and dreary around here, but our Leonard Messel magnolia is blooming away as if temps were in the 50s. Despite numerous worries, the blossoms seem to be holding up alright in the rain, strong country winds and low temps. I like magnolias so much that I planted 8 different varieties last year, which means that there are now a total of 11. In 10 years we should have quite a spring show.

Though Magnolia x Loebneri ‘Leonard Messel’ looks a lot like the mature and often wonderfully gnarled magnolias you see blooming in Cedar Rapids, IA in April, it is a different cultivar altogether. These older trees, Magnolia x soulangeana, are rarely seen for sale in nurseries anymore. My guess is this is because they are more slow growing than the ones widely available nowadays like Leonard or Jane (Magnolia liliflora ‘Nigra’ x M. stellata ‘Rosea”) and it takes them 8 to 9 years to bloom! Jane is the first magnolia I bought and she bloomed a year after I planted her when only 2 feet tall. She has been reliably packed with blooms each spring ever since. The furry coats are just beginning to fall off her buds. She’ll probably start blooming by the weekend.

Last year we had some amazing poppies – including California poppies. We live in Iowa so this was particularly amazing.

We had a nice showing of sunflowers this year. Most of them were volunteers, and most blooms are done now. I do enjoy a good volunteer. The birds seem to like the dried blooms. We will most definitely be feeding the birds more sunflower seeds this winter. Sorry to mention that season already.

(Here is the sunflower set on Flickr if the above slideshow doesn’t play for you.)