Our gardens

Our gardens

I have small shady garden, I like the informal style of gardening….many colors and huge plant diversity…

Here are some highlights from my garden..

...

Kuchlar, your garden photos look lovely & SO very inviting!

I, too, love the informal look with much plant diversity & colours. I try to be careful not to place certain colours next to each other but even if the colours don't look good on cloth or paper, in nature, they always blend nicely. Your mix of daisies are so nice. Hard for me to tell just what type as they look so alike until the leaves are checked. I see some verbena beside them, also some ageratum. I have a weakness for allium flowers. Allium tuberosum (garlic chives) have the sweetest scented flowers - like faint jasmine. This surprises many people who expect an onion-y smell.

Your campsis is also lovely - most that are sold here are only orange. I love the red & the yellow types more. I started some from cuttings last fall but will see if my new cuttings survived our unusually cold winter. Of all colours, orange is my least favourite but still very nice in nasturtiums. (Good thing green & blue are my favourite colours - green leaves & blue sky!! )

Does your ranunculus re-bloom nicely each year or do you plant fresh? How many colours do you have, Kuchlar?

I find that although many sites say ranuculus aren't that attractive to slugs, our local slugs haven't read this & munch their way through all sorts of so-called slug-resistant plants. Early spring plants suffer the worse as the slugs are very hungry for greenery. Since I garden organically, I wouldn't use slug bait/poison & I don't drink coffee so couldn't use coffee grounds (caffeine is a neuro-toxin to slugs). But there is a relatively new slug poison that's safe - iron phosphate - kills molluscs (snails & slugs) without harming anything else & breaks down in the soil over time to provide additional iron. It's more expensive but works VERY well. I plan to test it this year & may end up growing some plants that were eaten bare by slugs previously.

I am so glad that you lake my garden…. Especially when compliments come from such experienced gardener…
I don’t have many daisies, I have one Shasta daisy.. the other daisy like flowers are single Dahlias… I love ranunculuses i introduce them in my garden 2 years before..they always over winter successfully.... but I cover them with mulch for any case.. i have yellow, orange, white, red and pink
I’ve heard that frogs are useful for slugs.. they eat them..

here are my daisies..


and another photo of my ranunculuses

Of course! Single form dahlias! It's funny how we don't recognise a plant when we think it may be something else. When I first saw the red single dahlias, I thought they were chocolate cosmos (Cosmos atrosanguineus) but then realised they weren't. I had some seeds given to me but don't know what to expect as it develops as a tuber & I've read the seeds don't come true to form or colour. As long as I'm willing to be surprised, I know I'll be happy with the flowers.

Your Shasta daisy is the nice 'shredded' form (don't know what to call the form of its petals) - more interesting than the regular form. And Kuchlar, I wouldn't go so far as to call me an experienced gardener - just an enthusiastic one.

The frogs we have in abundance here are tiny tree frogs with very deep voices for such tiny frogs! The slugs are bigger than our tiny frogs. Toads eat slugs but I've never seen toads around here?? No idea why.

We live in slug heaven. With all our rain, you can guess why. Some get huge but it's the small ones hidden under leaves that I miss that cause the most damage. We have a carabid, a ground beetle here - very common - that is great at eating slugs & snails. I think ours is the introduced European ground beetle. Its larvae are predators too & they'll eat slug & snail eggs. When I dig in my garden, I'm careful not to destroy their larvae but to squish all snail & slug eggs I find. Most insects that move quickly are beneficial - they're predators so need to be fast. Most that suck or eat our plants are slow moving like aphids, or even slower like scale. This doesn't account for leaf hoppers though.

Here's photos of Cosmos astosanguineus plus 2 others of our ground beetle & larvae.

Kuchlar your garden is lovely. I don't particularly like Dahlias but the way you have grown them all mixed up cottage garden style really looks wonderful. Here in England people tend to grow the big round headed ones for shows and things and they will do a bed that is just Dahlias. Grown that way they just look artificial.
The Ranunculus are such bright zingy colours which I love. My garden in the summer is hot reds, oranges (sorry Iso) and yellows so the whole garden looks like it is on fire. Would love to be able to grow them but my soil is way too dry. Will have to make do with looking at yours!

can you show some pictures from your gardens..it would be nice. .

I have posted a few in the gallery but I spent last summer redoing my pond and my neighbour replaced the fence to the right of my garden so had to cut everything back and a lot got trodden on so I don't have many other pictures and not many are out yet this year so it all looks very green at the moment. As things start to come I will post some pictures. Promise.

...

Great pics and garden

My Euphorbia mysinites next to my pond

and my Cornus mas about a month ago.

it is interesting but both of these plants grow wild in Macedonia.. i have also planted this euphorbia in my alpinium..

here are some fresh photos..

I love the colours of that tulip kuchlar and the common name for the Dicentra in England is bleeding heart. Is that the same in Macedonia?
Here are some pictures of the colourful things starting to come up in my alpine bed including orange iso!
The really little Clematis marmoria that I bought at Wisley in flower

Tulipa tarda