Gardening and Gardens

Seems everywhere you look there are supplies for fairy gardens, articles on how to build one and websites selling miniature furniture. I've wanted to create a miniature fairy garden for quite some time but I just couldn't find the right spot in my garden for it. With two toddlers running around, I knew it had to be out of their reach, yet accessible for the older kids to enjoy it. While on my trip to Portland, I saw a container set among the garden filled with characters to create a setting. I knew this was my best option. So I purchased a saucer container (it's main purpose is to sit under a pot for drainage) and some potting soil. Next, I took the children to the craft store and purchased a wooden bird house, some colored river rocks and a few miniature furnishings. While my daughter painted the bird house with outdoor paint, my son laid the rocks in the soil to create a "river." It was so much fun watching them work together to create the setting they desired...

It's Garden Blogger Bloom Day! On the 15th of each month, we garden bloggers like to show off what's blooming and growing in our gardens. Here on Long Island, zone 7, things are blooming all over and some still recovering from my sour mulch disaster. Read more about that here .  Below are a few favorites from my garden this month: Hemerocallis Purple d'Oro This lovely purple daylily has a bright yellow center and crinkled edges on the petals.  Thankfully these chartreuse colored coral bells are recovering from the mulch disaster. The wispy pink blooms held above the bright foliage brightens up this shady spot under the viburnum. Courtesy of my four budding artists, I acquired some yard art for my garden and nestled them among the variegated Liriope.  And these Annabelle hydrangeas are blooming so profusely this year! They look like big snowballs.  Even though the flowers have faded from the viburnum shrubs, the red berries have...

Four days before my husband and I were set to host a 40th birthday party in our backyard for 60 guests, I decided to get a delivery of fresh mulch to spruce things up a bit and get the yard looking in top shape. It was a hot and humid day when the truck arrived and the workers started to lay the mulch. About six hours later, I returned home to find 60% of my plants looking dead or burned and the mulch smelled more like vinegar than freshly composted wood chips. To say I was devastated is an understatement. All my hard work to nurture small plants, all the annuals I planted early enough to look established in preparation for the party, all my woody shrubs I planted 2 years ago that had finally started to take off... destroyed. Here is a photo of the same spot taken the day before: So what happened? At first I thought it was that the mulch was too hot and put down on too hot of a day. But after talking to a few professionals and doing some of my own research online, it was con...

Things here have been, well, hectic, to say the least. I took these photos of the garden in mid June and today I see it is July 1! Nevertheless, I want to put these up anyway, because June is my favorite month in the garden. All the pinks, blues, purples and yellows making their way into view. The air smells delicious, the birds are chirping continuously throughout the day and the trees are still a lovely shade of bright green. Here's what my garden in June looks like this year: The pink astilbe look fabulous against the wall and their sweet, subtle fragrance is a treat if you catch a whiff of it. Along the edges, I'm so happy to see the "Pretty Polly" Heuchera (coral bells) starting to fill in and produce their delicate wispy blooms. Many varieties of hydrangea won't bloom this summer because of the brutal winter we had, which killed off all the over-wintering buds. But these Endless Summer varieties are just beginning to bloom and I'm so happy to s...