dianaschnuth

Usually my Bloom Day photos are close-ups like this one, showcasing the pops of color in my beds and borders. This time, though, I decided to go out and take some quick snapshots of my various plantings as a whole. I’ve done very little spring cleanup at this point, so I’m posting these as-is, warts and all.

Let’s begin our tour by the road, along the front fence.

These daffodils have been here since before we moved into this house nine years ago. I haven’t done much to this bed apart from standard maintenance (and pulling up the goldenrod), and I don’t really have any plans to do so. It cycles nicely through the seasons, going from daffodils to peonies to irises as the weeks go by.

These daffodils on the other side of the driveway, though, I moved here last fall from elsewhere on the property. Looks like some of them are happy here, although I’d hoped for a bigger show. Maybe they’ll bloom better next year, once they’re settled into their new home.

The forsythia is in bloom! The forsythia also needs some more pruning and shaping to avoid that slightly overgrown look it always seems to sport.

In the foreground is a random plant that our lawn guys gifted us last year. During one of their mows, one of the guys bumped the old rotten tree stump that had lived there since before we moved in, and it pretty much disintegrated. He pulled it out the rest of the way, got rid of it for us, and replaced it with this bush. It looks kind of random in that spot, and I would have thought the lawn guys would be glad not to have to mow around an obstacle, but I’ll always take a free plant.

Moving around to the front of the house… this is the border outside of our home office, and it clearly needs some cleanup. I didn’t mean to let the switchgrass spread from the neighbor’s yard, but it’s there now, along with the late-dropping leaves from their oak tree.

The hyacinths that grow here don’t really get much visibility, and I’ve been meaning to move them someplace where they’ll be more appreciated.

This is the living room window, at the front of the house. These ‘Apricot Whirl’ daffodils are in their second year of bloom, and they’ll soon be joined by the ‘Delnashaugh’ that I planted this past Fall.

I hadn’t anticipated the peachy-apricot blooms fading into the color of the brick behind them. Perhaps they need some white Narcissus to join them next year.

I moved these bicolor daffodils from another low-traffic area to the front walk a couple years ago, and I really like the pop of color they add. Maybe they need some low-growing friends in front of them.

This is the Front Garden, aka the eternal work-in-progress. There’s a couple of hyacinths hiding on the right, but most of the color is coming from the daffodils that line the pathways. I moved those here from elsewhere in the yard a couple years back, and I really like the effect.

The pink-flowering tree is a volunteer that I moved from another bed several years ago. I’m attempting to prune and shape it niwaki-style without straight-up killing it. Since it’s still flowering, and has a unique shape about it, I’m going to say it’s a success so far.

View of the Front Garden from the driveway. The dogwood tree on the right has been on its way out for some time now — I suspect it’s got dogwood borers. There’s a volunteer redbud tree that took root next to it, and I think I’m going to leave it there as a replacement for when the dogwood is finally gone.

These cute footprint pavers used to be spread all around the property in various flowerbeds, but I decided that I wanted to arrange them into a garden path.

Moving to the back yard… the raised bed that borders our neighbor’s raised bed hasn’t gotten the attention it probably should have over the years. I always forget these hyacinths are here.

Once these daffs are done blooming, they’re going to get moved to live next to some other daffs for more impact. This just isn’t a very effective spot for them.

Also, say hi to Sunny, the neighbor’s dog.

Last but not least, this is the back of the house, aka the Early Spring Border. This is the source of much of my Spring excitement every February and into March.

Right now, it’s sporting some daffodils and hyacinths, along with a few muscari (grape hyacinth) and some brunnera (false forget-me-not). Soon, the alliums will be popping up — the ones I didn’t move last year, anyway — and the dwarf Japanese maple will start to leaf out.

And that concludes our Zone 6 garden tour for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day in April 2022!

Thanks as always to Carol Michel for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day on the 15th of each month! As Elizabeth Lawrence said, “We can have flowers nearly every month of the year.”