Keith Irvine, in chilly Zone 3 in Canada, shared his gorgeous vegetable garden with us last week (Keith’s Vegetable Garden), and today we’re visiting a different section of the garden.
07.08.2023 - 07:51 / finegardening.com / GPOD Contributor
My name is Diane Porter, and I live in Nova Scotia, Canada. We are a Zone 5 area here, so I like pretty hardy plants. Daylilies (Hemerocallis, Zones 4–9 for most cultivars) fit my garden perfectly. I have always enjoyed gardening and actually worked at a local garden center for a few seasons. The gardening bug hit hard!
As for my daylilies, they were almost all a rescue mission. We had discovered that a daylily farm we frequented to buy their plants was closing. The owner was kind enough to offer us a rare chance to “dig up and take home” from one of his fields for free. We gave 29 daylilies a new home. I don’t know the names of most of them, but I love the show they put on; it’s amazing.
An ideal day for me would be setting up my watercolor paints beside the lily beds and painting.
I love all the shades of pink mingling together in this patch of daylilies.
A color echo from a soft yellow daylily and a black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta, Zones 3–8)
Daylilies come in nearly every color except blue, and this intense red is particularly nice.
Some daylilies are so dark they are almost black. Sometimes these superdark flowers are best planted in light shade, especially in hot climates, as many of them will burn in intense sun.
It isn’t all daylilies in this garden. Here’s a view of some of the rest of the space, with phlox (Phlox paniculata, Zones 5–8), liatris (Liatris spicata, Zones 3–9), and Adam’s needle (Yucca filamentosa, Zones 4–10) all showing off with flowers.
Adam’s needle can reach up over 6 feet tall.
Modern daylily breeding has expanded the color range and complexity of color patterns. This one has a beautiful dark eye.
Individual daylily blooms are beautiful, but daylilies really make an impact in the garden
Keith Irvine, in chilly Zone 3 in Canada, shared his gorgeous vegetable garden with us last week (Keith’s Vegetable Garden), and today we’re visiting a different section of the garden.
Today, frequent GPOD contributor Cherry Ong is taking us along on a garden tour she was able to go on in June. The tour was part of a four-day plant-study weekend organized by the Vancouver Hardy Plant Group, and the tour visited some beautiful gardens near Vancouver, Canada.
A fad in modern architecture and gardening or a necessity to bring back nature into industrialised densely built urban landscapes? Living green walls are becoming more and more popular, so we decided to explore the benefits, installation and maintenance process of these structures. Read on to find out how long they have been around, why so many buildings are having them, and how you can make one for your home.
In Yorkshire we are lucky to have several gardens designed using the theme of a Himalayan Garden. The Hut near Ripon at Grewlthorpe is  ‘The Himalayan Garden’ with all the plants you would expect in such a setting including
Britain has some of the best gardens in the world. The choice of which to visit is far larger than this selective list but at least it gives you somewhere to start planning this years outings.
In the cold wet winter it is a good time to plan where to visit as the year improves. The South West is the obvious place to start your visiting tour of gardens containing exotic plants.
China is one of the great destinations for visiting gardens. The influence over garden design and the vast array of plants and flowers is secondary to the investment in time and dedication demonstrated in so many great locations. This is just a selection of those you may consider visiting if you can make the journey..
Peace is not just the absence of war it can be a reflection of a personal inner tranquility. To many gardeners peace may be a state of harmony with nature. It is a theme of several ‘hard landscape’ projects and sculptural works as shown by the selection of Peace gardens below.
Holland Park has some Zen like features but fails my Zen test. The classic elements of a successful Zen are stone, sand or gravel, water, plants and space. Then there is a question of balance between yin and yang. Cramped or cluttered gardens inhibit the flow of spirit so space is potentially the key ingredient of a Zen garden.
Some animals can be a real pest in the garden. Their crimes include eating the wrong thing, digging in the wrong area, turning grass brown with urine and leaving a dirty mess. Some chose your favourite plants to damage as I know from some aggressive over fed pigeons in my own garden. In my experience the worst offenders are rabbits, cats, mice, deer, pigeons and dogs including foxes. Rats cause concern but have not caused direct damage in my garden.
I was picking the Czar plums to make more jam when a wasp was disturbed from eating it’s lunch. Wasps go for my plums just as they are at their sweetest best. My problem was I couldn’t see which plums had a wasp in the fruit if they were above head height or facing away from my hand. The resulting sting set me on the trail of other stingers in the garden.
For over 25 years I have gardened a rockery or rock garden on a triangular patch of poor soil. I progressively scrounged and collected a range of granite, limestone and sandstone rocks and added them piecemeal. I aspired to growing alpine plants and recognised good drainage and shelter from winter wet weather would be key but that is as far as my planning would go. For the first couple of decades I was busy at work and wasn’t able to put in the effort of looking after small but hardy alpines.