How Does Your Garden Grow?

Some of you may remember the blog post toward the end of last summer about a new garden area we developed adjacent to the shop. At the Woodworking in America Conference last fall Julie and I were amazed by how many people commented on the garden post. This post is a garden update.

The plantings managed better thru August than I had anticipated. The exception were the Native Azaleas. It seemed we couldn't give them enough water and before winter arrived they had lost most of their foliage. Julie and I were wondering what might be a suitable replacement. We decided to give them the winter to settle in and see what would happen in the spring. They bloomed profusely and seem to be making a come back, unfortunately I didn't get any pictures while they were blooming.

 As you all well know spring came early this year and before I even thought about taking pictures many of the plantings were past blooming. Some of the later spring offerings are showing up at this time and the new fern fronds have emerged. I love the reddish orange color of the new Autumn fern foliage.

 This overall pictures gives you an idea of just how green it is in Georgia this time of year. It's so green most of the foreground in this photo blends into the background.

These variegated hostas (above) are not showing much contrast. Sometimes too much compost makes them so green they don't show the variegation as much as we'd like. They seemed to emerge overnight it seemed.

The oregano shown below was much the same, however with the mild winter these plants never really went dormant. In fact I visited this patch a couple of times during the winter to do some harvesting on pizza night. Nothing better than herbed pizza crust with fresh oregano and rosemary.

Another hosta (below) emerging later than the others, yet still quite early in the growing season

The Radican Gardenias are a main stay of our woodland garden and will be sporting small white flowers before long.

Julie and I installed drip irrigation in two of the planting berms last fall. We still need to install another drip system into the last berm this spring. Warm weather arriving so early has me a bit worried as to what might be in store for this summer.

We'll be adding a few more plantings to the garden yet this spring and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the deer don't decided the salad bar is open. I have to admit the hostas look hard to resist.

Ron