How about three garden tours all in one day! Our small ladies luncheon group decided to have our own garden tours and tour each other's gardens.
Three of us volunteered our gardens. Sit back and you can enjoy the tours from your couch and not have to venture out in the heat. This is a long post with lots of pics.
Here are the gardens we toured:
Meet Doreen who has lived in the same house and has been gardening here over 30 years. Her gardens and yard certainly show her dedication!
Doreen says she has lots of shade and takes that in consideration when planting. Take a look at her Oakleaf Hydrangea in the second and third pics of the collage. Isn't it gorgeous!
More hydrangea and lamp's ear. Her mopheads are pink and blue.
Love this birdhouse on a pole and the ivy she trained to twine around it.
A few of the ladies in our group.
Even Doreen's cat got in on the tour. What a cute rooster too!
One of our favorite things in Doreen's yard was her birdhouse bush. She said this bush just didn't grow well and had holes in it. She just filled the holes with birdhouses. How smart is this! I may just need to borrow this idea.
Thanks, Doreen, for letting us tour your garden.
Another garden we visited was Martha's. Check out her yellow primrose in the pic below.
Martha has lived in her house for less than a year, she has really been busy getting her yard ready to tour. Her red begonias are gorgeous.
She says her yard is small and mostly concrete so container gardening and raised beds are a must for her.
Mandevilla
Petunias
She had a nice deck added to the back of her house. You can see the large butterfly bush she planted last year.
Adrienne, who is one of the ladies in our group, served refreshments on Martha's deck. Notice the large flowerpot on the deck, Martha designed the arrangement.
Martha has a fence that she has added lots of interesting elements. She picked up most of the elements by thrifting them. She painted most white so they would show up on her fence.
The last stop was Judy's gardens (that's me). I have lived in this house for about six years and started new gardens as soon as we moved in.
The Shade Garden was our first garden to start from scratch at this house. It is filled with hostas, ferns, heucheras, astilbe, coleus, and spiderwort. Each year I have added new plants.
Hydrangea growing in another shade area.
Another flower bed has tiger lilies blooming.
The Garden Fairy Bed - the fairy statue was a gift from my Mom years ago.
Beardtongue Penstemon in a small bed.
Container Gardening
Verbenia
Zinnias
Yellow Daylilies in sunny places.
Banana tree, elephant ears and daylilies
After the garden tours, we had our ladies' luncheon at Judy's house where we filled our plates in her kitchen then ate on the deck.
Linking to:
Thankful Thursday @ It's a Small Town Life
What a wonderful garden tour! The floral photographs are absolutely stunning! You all have green thumbs, much greener than mine! What a nice time to get together for lunch too! Looks delicious!
ReplyDeleteThat was me! I'm not anonymous!
ReplyDeleteall three gardens are so beautiful - like an oasis for plant lovrs
ReplyDeleteA great idea! I do the same thing with my garden friends :) Inspirational!
ReplyDeleteJudy,
ReplyDeleteThis was such a wonderful post!! I love the idea that you toured your friend's gardens and then had a nice lunch too!! All the gardens are so pretty and all the ladies whose gardens you toured, including yourself, are to be commended on their green thumbs!!!! All so beautiful!! Thanks so much for sharing!! I really enjoyed this post!!!
Hugs,
Deb
What a wonderful tour! I absolutely loved the birdhouse tree!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed seeing all these beautiful gardens, full of blooms and sparkling design ideas! I love the bush with the birdhouses!
ReplyDeleteAll the gardens were lovely to see but I loved your garden the best, Judy! I ahve a lot of shade so I appreciated seeing what grows well in your garden. It is a challenge to grow anything here in Colorado with our very changeable weather.
ReplyDeleteAll are beautiful. Thank you for sharing. Regine
ReplyDeletewww.rsrue.blogspot.com
Nice to see all these lovely blooms. Beautiful captures!
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely garden! Everything is so lush and green!
ReplyDeleteJudy - what a wonderful idea! I am inspired to plan something like this with some of my lady friends! I have not been on any garden tours lately. My garden is still "waking up" - we have had plenty of rain but not much warmth, so things are coming along slowly. My golden currant bushes are in full bloom and one of my apple trees opened its first buds today. Columbines will be blooming any day now. Many other plants such as blanket flower and aspen fleabane are forming flower heads. Exciting!
ReplyDeleteWow ! What a lovely garden ! I loved the photo of fairy figurine standing amidst blooms,Thanks for sharing with Garden Affair.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing such lovely and inspiring gardens! What a joy it was to visit!
ReplyDeleteLovely gardens to visit and sit and enjoy with friends, and the bird house tree is so cute! Thankyou for taking us along, stay safe, enjoy your week, and thankyou for visiting my blog last week.
ReplyDeleteWhat fun to share the beauty!
ReplyDeleteThe birdhouse bush is such a wonderful idea. I've done something similar with a hole in the lawn and I covered it with a statue. Wondering if I could do a birdhouse bush - got to think about it.
ReplyDelete