I recently discovered the joys of cactus! I have a nice cactus bed along the south wall of the house, but I wanted to put some in the garden too. Cacti do not like heavy clay soil so I decided to put some specimens in pots. I chose vibrant colors that mimic the colors in Mexican talavera pottery. I’ll be adding some talavera pottery sculptures in the years to come as I can afford to do so. they’re pricey. But I think I made a good start on this garden.
Cactus pot garden
I planted a variety of agave and smaller cactus species.
Early summer is for Lavender! The Lavender/purple aliums self seeded themselves into the day lily garden. They were a wonderful surprise the first year they sprang up. I had planted the aliums along the hedge of the day lily garden, next to the hedge, several years ago in an attempt to fill up a blank space there. Over time the day lilies took over the whole space and the lilies threw their seed out into the day lily garden. I love the result! And the best part: I didn’t have to dig in those huge lily bulbs.
The lavender blooms of the Korean dwarf lilac hide the interior of the front porch giving privacy throughout the summer, and their fragrance is very strong. You can smell them from the driveway as you approach the front door. Wonderful greeting!
Willow Garden – South border
Early summer brings Iris and flowering shrubs to the Willow garden. Pink blooming Red Sand cherry, white blooming leather leaf Viburnum, and pink blooming Black lace viburnum (not in bloom here – it blooms later in the summer).
Willow garden – south side shrubs
The gold mound Spirea puts on a brilliant show with just the leaves, in bright yellow and chartreuse. Later it will flower in a delicate pink as the yellow leaves mature to a slightly darker green.
The willows themselves, which grow in the middle of this garden, also flower, but their flowers are
Willow garden – North side shrubs
insignificant if you aren’t up close. They look like little yellow bottle brushes, 2″ long and about 1/4″ around.
South Noodle Garden – Rust and Orange iris and Ohio Buckeye Tree
These rust and orange mixed Iris are filling in wonderfully in the street-side noodle gardens. The baby buckeye trees is struggling – but I’ve been babying him along – time will tell.
I love the combination of purples in this Iris grouping.
Cupola with purple alium
The witches hat cupola looks wonderful with the purple aliums dancing in front.
Pom Poms! There are actually 4 shrubs here. I planted 2 on each side of the drive river bed. I had planned on putting an arched trellis between the shrubs to created a walkway to the stone patio which is behind them, but they have grown together now, so I’m not sure if I have the heart to cut them back.
Butterfly garden – Pom Pom shrubs
The yellow leafed ninebark is striking with the red barberry.
April 2017 I received my first bee package. I nurtured them through that first summer and winter. In October of 2017 I have a vibrant hive, with two deeps installed and 1 super in place for the winter. At inspection we estimated approximately 80,000 bees and plenty of honey to get through the winter. and yes, they made it through the winter but in April of 2018, I went outside one bright spring morning, and found the hive completely abandoned.
My local bee expert came over to take a look, and he found no sign of mites, disease or vermin, and the bees had left a completely full, 10 frame deep of honey. I think they must have swarmed and moved on. Me as a first time bee keeper didn’t know to look for signs of them needing to split or swarm with new queen, so I lost that first hive, and it was too late to order new bees that season. So I packed everything up into storage, including 80 lbs of honey in that deep.
I order bees again this spring, and just got them into the hive, along with 4 of the full frames of honey. That should be enough to get them going. but I will be keeping a closer eye on them this time.
More viburnum and Sand cherry on the interior side of the willow gardenThe street side view of the Willow garden: Sand cherry, viburnum, Golden spirea and black lace Elderberry.Red and yellow – south/east shoulder gardenI love all the different shades of green on the interior south bermStage God, enjoying his mushrooms! Daylilies have burst out of the ground!CupolaThe Russian Olive, and behind that, the Locust tree. Both were pruned hard in January. I’m keeping them in a dwarf size.The oldest apple tree in the orchard. Leafing out after a hard prune in January.First year transplanted shrubs on the new mid-west berm. this berm was installed to cup around the shape of what will eventually be a pond.Hawthornthese are white tulips with light lavender blushing. the color doesn’t show as well as I would have like in the pic. but they are in the garden next to the water dragon.Fire dragonMy outside kitty sits calmly on the back of the dragon.
Vole damage in the herb garden. I don’t know how they got in, the floor of the garden is lined with chicken wire and the picket side slats at lined with rabbit wire. But they got in and pretty much destroyed everything. I have a small patch of oregano left, and lemon balm, one of the 5 golden marjorams made it, and the betony and comfrey were untouched as was the chives, of course. Everything else is gone. Literally, gone.
So I’m going to toss poison way down into the holes, then the next week I’m going to throw around some deterrent pellets. Then I need to re-level the beds and bring in new composted garden soil. I will do this over a period of weeks. Meanwhile, I need to try to figure out how they got in there in the first place.
Maybe I’ll buy some of the perennial herbs and get them planted before the fall, and then start over with the annuals next spring. Maybe it’s for the best – the walkways and the gates need to be replaced, they’re 13 years old now and falling apart. So maybe not having a garden full of plants that are in the way, will allow that project to move forward. so I’m trying to put a bright side on the situation, but wow, just wow. Utter devastation.
And from now on, I’ll be throwing vole deterrent around the yard on a regular basis.
Every year a new weed tries to take over the walkway between the herb garden and the vegetable garden. Last year it was thistle, the year before it was Kochia and errant grass, this year it’s prickly lettuce, lambs quarters and shepherds purse.
weeds! S/W pathway
For some reason this one area is heavily covered with lambs quarters. Luckily they pull out of the rock very easily, as there is a fabric underneath; but I can’t just spray them. The sprayed weeds will dry and then decompose into the bottom layer of the rock, building up a compost type soil over time that will grow more weeds, so pulling – for 2 hours.
S/W pathway, after
I left the very tiny weeds, because they’re actually too small to pull. I can’t grab them with my gloves on and I’m not going to sacrifice my finger tips to this purgatory.
The S/E walkway was easier as it had larger weeds, and was much more sparse. I got that done in 1/2 hour, after spending 2 hours weeding the vegetable beds.
S/E Vegetable bed and pathway, weeded!
I think one more session of weeding this area, and this level of purgatory will be purged! (And then I can move on to another location.)
My dear, and long time friend Panayoti Kelaidis and his partner Jan came over to tour the gardens this July. Panayoti is the Senior curator and Director of Outreach at the Denver Botanical Gardens. I’ve known him for 25 years, from way back in my Landmark Education days. I did the Forum https://www.landmarkworldwide.com/ with his then wife, Gwen Moore, in 1993. They were instrumental in guiding me through my early years of gardening at my house in Aurora. Over the years Panayoti has brought me many botanical presents, all of which are growing in my Brighton garden, Wellyssa’s Womb.
Jan, Wellyssa, Panayoti, Brian
OMG! I was soo nervous and desperate to impress! But they both said they thoroughly enjoyed the garden, and being the good friend, and kind man that he is, Panayoti heaped praises on the garden. The garden was very happy.
The Garden is looking beautiful
(sorry for the blurry pictures, I think I finally figured out which setting to use on my camera that isn’t too big for download, and won’t come out blurry for the future.) I’m a gardener, not a photographer! Hearing the voice of Dr. McCoy in the back of my mind . . .
The “bomb cyclone” as it’s called, was Colorado’s strongest storm in recorded history. I ran around the yard and tried to reinforce the tie downs and landscape pins on any structure that isn’t concreted in place, by the time I was through, I was frozen too.
March Blizzard
The picture doesn’t do it justice – the wind was blowing at 65 mph, horizontal, north to south, and whipping back towards the house, which faces east, piling up on the wall and front door. There was a little triangle from the door to the wall on the right that was clear of snow, completely untouched by the wind. We put down a pile of seed there, and in just a few minutes the porch was covered with birds eating and hunkering down against the wind; even a rabbit ventured up to steal some seed from the birds.
I have a great video that I took before the windows iced over, but Word Press platform won’t let me share it. (booo hisss). Within an hour the wind picked up even more and every window in the house was iced over, the cast iron patio furniture had been blown over and some of it actually thrown off the porch into the lawn, the tall skinny crimson oaks were whipping back and forth like a feather duster.
Brian, trying to get home!
Meanwhile, my workaholic husband who insisted on going to work, called it a day and headed home around 11:30am. This was the scene on I70. They closed the highway about 15 minutes after this picture and literally turned all the cars around. It took Brian 3 hours to get home (usually a 45 minute trip). I asked Brian to check in every 30 minutes so I knew where he was and that he hadn’t ended up in a ditch with a large number of other vehicles that day!
Back at home, the Meanwhile inside, the cats had both run to their hiding places as the corners of the roof shook and creaked, the wind forcing it’s way up under the siding and slapping it against the house, little mini tornadoes whirling in from the bathroom ceiling vents – and something I’ve never seen before, the water in two of the toilet bowls was sloshing up and down the drain! So Weird. Like watching the water gurgle on a horror show and you’re thinking move away from the toilet you idiot! the swamp monster is going to eat your face!!!! This must be how it feels to be in a tornado right before your house blows apart!
After the storm
After the storm: 3 foot drifts in the backyard and 5 foot drifts up against the north berm, street side. I didn’t loose any trees – thank the Gods! The ditches were totally full of snow making them look like part of the street – but no neighbors fell in this time!
We’ve been wanting to do this project for 10 years, but there has always been something more important going on, or a bigger project I was more invested in. Now that’s it’s finished, I can’t believe we waited this long, the difference is amazing. To be able to define the space at the bottom of the exterior berms from the edges of the drainage ditches surrounding the property makes such a difference.
As I laid out the 800 yards of hose, rope, electrical cord and whatever else I could find to set the straight lines so I could paint where the edge was going to go, I realized that what is visually equal or straight from the viewpoint of the berm, is NOT straight from the viewpoint of the road.
Sculpting around the curved edges of the noodle gardens
So I had to lay out the lines, according to what I thought looked good, or where the existing berm and mulched plantings ended, and then go stand on the street and take a look. Yikes! What a difference. I had to move the hoses, etc., to be in line with the edge of the straight line of the street, as viewed from the street, to get it to look good. This was really tedious, I had no idea it would be such a pain.
Looking from east at the front of the property to west end
Then we laid 24″ width’s of weed barrier, double layer next to the lines for the rocks to sit on. I’m NOT gong to pull grass out from between 800 yards of rock! 12″ of the fabric ran up the berm to be tucked under the mulch, and then smaller fill rocks were added around the larger edging rocks to fill the gaps and hide the fabric at the ditch side of the edging.
This project used 25 tons of 8-12″ granite rip-rap. I had the truck drop 1/2 the pile in the south materials area and the other 1/2 had to be dropped in the street in the culdesac on the north side, so we had to do that side first (I didn’t want my neighbors to have to be driving around my rock pile for months).
We extended the edging to the rear driveway and created a rocked area to connect the culvert to the driveway concrete and up the slope to the main edge of the edging, and from the culvert up the other side to the street edge.
I had a 25% off materials coupon from Ewing Irrigation and Landscaping, as a “good customer” reward. Ha! they had no idea what was coming. When I told the lady behind the counter I needed 25 tons of rip-rap AND I have a 25% off coupon, she had to call corporate to get an OK, but I got that OK! but I got my 25 tons for $525.00.
For this project I used labor from my friend Jester Martin, at http://nadurragardens.com/. He sent me over a laborer, Thomas, to do the heavy lifting and the tedious job of measuring, cutting and placing the weed barrier down. Thomas dug out the largest rocks from both piles and spaced them equally along the entire length of the fabric border on the north and south sides. Between laying the fabric and pulling out the big stones, this took 3 days. After that phase was complete, I and my friend Sherry (whom I also paid, but not as much as the guy from Nadurra) began to fill in the spaces between the largest rocks with the next biggest rocks, tucking in the smaller 4″ and 2″ rocks to make everything tight and to fill in the gaps.
(Yes, 2″rocks. I bought 8-12″ rip-rap and I had probably a full ton of 2-4″ pieces. I was really pissed! I actually had to go back to the yard and hand pull another 2 tons of rocks, 3 loads in my pick up, to finish the job, because at least 1/3 of the pile was undersized. They refused to offer me a refund or exchange or replacement. I will never buy materials from Ewing again.) Wish I had taken pics of the piles though – they were impressive!
East end snake
Years ago, my now-moved-away-neighbor Roy, brought me this awesome snake head shaped rock and placed it at the end of the front/south rock berm. It’s about 3′ long and 18″ high and 24″ wide. I had a few large granite stones (18″ x 12″) in a pile in the back yard waiting for the right thing to do with them. So Sherry and I wrangled them up on the heavy duty hand cart and drug them one by one across the yard, out the back driveway, up the street to the east end of the property, down the ditch and then back up the other side and set them in place, one by one. We connected the rock berm to the head of the snake and then incorporated the head of the snake into the rock edging. We turned the snakes tail around in a bending pattern, propping the last stone up in the air like the tip of his tail.
We also had to drag over a few of the largest stones up out of the ditch around the drainage pipe that runs under street. These stones had to be dug up out of the ground where they had been sitting, and the rolled, flipping them over one side at a time, up the steep drainage pit that they were set into, and then towards the snake about 20′ away. People must have thought we were insane. We’d haul one stone, flipping it over and over, get it in place with sticks and crowbars and lots of grunting and then fall into the grass of the ditch and lay there panting and sweating for 10 minutes. Then we’d get up and go fetch the next rock. We got all 11 rocks in place in one 3 hours session.
Straight line viewed from the street!
Now we have a beautiful straight, decorative edge all the way around the property. Thank you Jester, Thomas, Sherry and me!
Future project awaits! There are 52 breeze stones here, enough to make a nice sized wall 13′ long and 4 stones high, or for more privacy maybe a 7′ wide x 7′ tall screen? Ohhh the possibilities! $44. (The flagstone to the right was purchased last summer, and will be used for the labyrinth.)
These 5 pedestals are 30″ high, including the base piece. I got them for $25 each. I think I’m going to put large pots on them, but they could also lend themselves to being a bird bath or feeder, or pedestal for statuary. I’ll figure it out.
Now that’s it’s finished, I can’t believe we waited this long, the difference is amazing. To be able to define the space at the bottom of the exterior berms from the edges of the drainage ditches surrounding the property makes such a difference.
