Summertime is garden time in our family: fireflies and fairies live in the garden. We go out to the garden to pick tomatoes for salads and mint for mohitos, to lounge and drink cold home-brewed beer on warm evenings, to watch the bluejays and cardinals and finches and woodpeckers. The girls are learning to identify the flowers and birds; they pick fistfuls of pansies and Sweet William and we fill tiny vases and shotglasses for centerpieces at the kitchen table and their picnic table.
I started gardening in Iowa, the summer I moved into the adorable shack. While the tiny house was less than ideal in severe weather, it had a pretty (if neglected) perennial garden with an old-fashioned climbing rose, and a large space for a vegetable garden. I had almost zero experience gardening. My mom plants loads of pretty annuals every spring, sometimes she grew tomatoes in pots on the deck, and one year as part of a school science project we grew tomatoes from seeds that had been in space. But the Iowa garden was the first space that was really my own, and it was Iowa, after all: didn’t corn basically leap out of the earth in Iowa? Surely not much expertise would be needed to grow a few tomato plants in such rich, Midwestern earth.
This may have been my only assumption about Iowa that was absolutely correct: our gardens there were gorgeous, lush, with enormous tomatoes and fabulous lettuces and overflowing containers of pretty annuals. When T and I began house shopping after moving back to Michigan, we were hooked: space to garden was a must. Our gardens here have been through a variety of reincarnations; the latest version includes the fairy garden, of course, and a sitting area nestled in between raised beds with trellises for hops. My gardening style tends toward what I might call “crowded cottage garden:” I like my plants tucked in close to one another, leaves and blossoms overlapping.
I thought it would be fun to chronicle summer in the garden—here’s what’s blooming today: (photos after the jump)
Lavender, roses that weirdly reappeared after I thought I had dug them all out years ago, phlox and ironweed.
The seating area, complete with a thriving potato patch to be dug in the next couple weeks. The hops trellises are several feet shorter than T was hoping for, but I stood firm in my conviction that they should not be visible from the front yard.
Bee Balm just about to bloom.
Hops for homebrew (and hopefully shade!)
The fairy garden has really taken off, probably because the girls lavish it with water and love.
The tipsy pots are just getting going. The girls can never remember the word tipsy, and are forever calling them the tipover pots or the topsy pots.
We planted moonflower seeds in the top pot, and the shoots are just emerging. I like how they looks so otherworldly here, like they might actually be plants from the moon.
Clematis, with hollyhock buds in the foreground. I love hollyhocks. My bestest friend in Iowa had gorgeous double black hollyhocks next to her house, and I always miss her when mine bloom.
Evening primrose, morning light. This photo doesn't do justice to their happy yellow presence along my fence, but I only had a tiny window of time to take pictures this morning after I took the recycling out and told the girls to yell BABY EMERGENCY out the back door if Margeaux got into trouble.
I wish I had the remotest green thumb. I love our yard but my gardening strategy is throw seeds around and see what happens. We haven’t pulled anything from a little spot in our side yard because I can’t tell what’s weeds and what’s zinnias. For this reason, we are doing a CSA this year.
This is actually the first year in a long time we haven’t done a CSA (long story). But most of what I grow is pretty easy and low maintenance. Flats of annuals are cheap this time of year: just stick some stuff in the ground and water it! You live in Iowa: growth is basically mandatory.
Aaaahhh I am super jealous. In Oklahoma depending on the area of my yard I am fighting sandy and clay severely malnurished soil, and since my house faces Northish, some wierd sun exposures. Add in the crazy hot summers, and it is challenging. I am determined to get perrennials going, but currently have been having to plant 15-20 new plants a year when I find that my soil/sun/heat means that something doesn’t come back. I have already killed my astilbe this year, they can’t stand the heat. I feel like I should take pics, I am mostly in the golden time before it’s so hot things die and while several things are still blooming.
Anyway, lovely gardens Jen!!
Iowa really is “gardening for dummies.” I’m truly screwed if/when we move somewhere else because I already kinda suck at growing stuff here!
I’ve killed a couple astilbe too!! Have you tried coneflowers? Bee balm? Both do well throughout the summer here- but our heat isn’t as intense as yours!!
June really is the prettiest month, isn’t it?
I haven’t tried coneflowers or bee balm, I think because I haven’t seen them potted? and my record growing things from seed is abysmal. However, I am wanting to sort of fill in some holes in my current garden and I think throwing some seeds around will help. Did you start yours from seed?
There is a huge display of potted coneflower on display at my greenhouse right now! Its on sale! I wish I could send you some.
I’m pretty sure my coneflower and bee balm both came from other gardeners who were dividing their plants (actually, my red bee balm came that way and my purple bee balm I dug out of a friend’s neighbor’s ditch, which tells you something about how low maintenance it is). Coneflower grows reliably from seed– not sure about bee balm. It’s in the mint family (square stem) so it spreads like mad once you get it started. If you can find somebody who is growing it, have them dig you a little pot to get it going in your garden
Thank you so much! I will start stalking my neighbors gardens
also super jealous and a bit nostalgic for midwestern summers… we’ve got the gardening bug around here too. although in denver it was really just an excuse to not buy a lawnmower for our 8×30 front yard strip when we moved. we’re trying the xeriscape world on for size, minimal water and drought-resistant perennials and herbs. digging was weird for two transplanted iowans used to dark black earth alive. here it’s more like clay dust with an occasional pillbug. but things grow! and that’s the beauty part.
Neat, Marie!! I promise your package will arrive in Colorado before the summer heat fades. Life has been chaotic and it’s been in my trunk for a month!!