Today is a happy day—I can officially say that my garden is in full bloom! It’s always a wonderful surprise when I see little green shoots emerge from the prior year! I’ve mentioned before that my garden is equally as special to me as my most cherished and time-honored recipes. So, I am thrilled to invite you all into my garden today.
Gardens that are carefully planned and developed can be as dreamy as the home in which you live. In fact, I consider the garden an opportunity to surround myself with plants that fill me with contentment and delight. With each leaf that puts forth and each bulb that returns year after year to bring a welcomed splash of color, the seasons come alive!
To this day, I am still so pleased with the decision to include raised beds in my English-inspired garden. You can fill them with carefully blended soil that will nourish your plants. This additional architectural element in the garden easily becomes the highlight!
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Thanks to everyone. My heart is full of joy reading and seeing.
Usually we have beautiful azaleas and hydrangea in bloom by now but so far the blooms are scarce. Our gardens really need an overhaul. I’m getting inspiration from the photos of your gardens. I especially love your raised garden areas. Beautiful!!
Thank you Martha. I love going out in the morning and seeing what has popped up. I know mine will need overhauling soon.
How lovely to see it in bloom! I have two beds in a local community garden and it is just now getting warm enough to start planting. One of my beds is an herb garden and I will plant as many varieties as I can, especially cilantro, sage, and thyme. The second bed is new to me and has a sunny and shady half as it’s right next to a trellis. I am trying to decide what to plant but I’m sure I will include some ferns.
That will be fun planning your garden. I just love it!
Here in Ohio close to Lake Erie, we are just starting our spring season. Which means we could have a cold rain drenched morning, an 80’ sunny afternoon, and then suddenly a quick hailstorm followed by a blanket of snow. And, yes, that really happened recently ! We don’t have much in bloom yet, but what we have is bright, cheerful, and sturdy! Lots of Daffodils, tulips, crocuses, hyacinths, and forsythia. Some pansies and violets and flowering trees. The trees just started getting green and it’s such a welcome sight after a long winter.
Once it starts they bloom so quickly. I wish Spring lasted longer! I
Thank you for sharing your beautiful English styled garden. I love being one of your “friends” and receiving your special thoughts about home and family. You are such an oasis in a sometimes troubled world. I enjoy each post and my beautiful Southern Lady Magazine. I will always have precious memories of all the Southern Lady Celebrations and the many friends I made along the way.
sylvia we are planning a Southern Lady Celebration for this October! the announcement will come soon. I hope you can come!!!!!
Since I garden on a hill, I envy your raised bed. Your peonies are just gorgeous, as well as the other flowers. I live in New England, and flowering trees are partially in bloom. Weeping cherry trees, azaleas, rhodendron, Forsyth is as well as flowering crab apples! I always love watching the bedding plants shoot up and blossom. I do love the border pinks, which have a rich floral minty smell. I really enjoyed seeing your flowers!
Thank you Paula. I know yours is beautiful too.
How lovely! We thought we were having an earlier spring in Canada this year- the trees are starting to bud and it’s been warmer until the last week where it seems to be snowing a bit every night again. By mid day it is so much better but we will be glad to see the kind of flowers you have! Can’t wait for spring!
I am always looking for a new plant to add!!
Thank you for sharing your lovely English garden. I live in the Seattle area, and our gardens are just beginning to bloom. I love to be inspired by others’ beautiful gardens!
What a lovely garden! I love the colors.
My small garden features a cottage garden, an English border and an herb garden. My favorite flowers are the old fashioned kind, such as foxgloves, delphiniums, hollyhocks, lily of the valley, and 21 David Austin English roses. I also have coral bells, clematis, Virginia bluebells, primroses and ferns. The plants are full of buds, and I’m watching diligently for them to open. My tree peony is full of beautiful 5 inch blooms. Spring is a beautiful time of the year.
So beautiful Phyllis! Thank you for sharing. Sadly, spring here in Toronto, Canada, is unusually slow in coming this year. I am desperately looking for some signs of it. There are a few green things poking up here and there and my brave little chives are up as well. They say that if you have a garden and good books to read you have everything you need!
I love the raised beds, and it’s always such a joy when spring brings all those beautiful flowers to our gardens again! We just planted another climbing Eden rose, and a clematis to twine around each other and the cover to our back garden patio.
Isn’t that the most fun of a garden? That each year, it seems some other plants do better and bloom brighter than the year before, giving each kind of plant its own year in the spotlight?
The garden is magical. The flowers are vibrant and bright. A good spot to relax and read.
Marilyn
Your garden is lovely, so colorful.
Marion
Beautiful garden.
Joan
Phyllis, I completely agree with you on those returning cherished blooms. I look at my emerging plants as I well remember where they’ve come from.
I have pinks from my Grandmother, coral bells from my Mother, bloom forevers from a long ago neighbor from Hungrey. I cherish these and so many other things that I have saved like the forget-me-nots that bloom so early and add the happy faces in blue to my garden that is always such a delight as I brought back those seeds from the Bronte home over 30 years ago.
Each year I wait in great anticipation for these treasures to surprise and delight me once again.
Beautiful! Your raised beds and planters are just gorgeous! I love the masonry, too.
I am fond of the cool end of the spectrum so I have lavender but the blooms are beginning to wane a bit. It is a cool plant because it tends to self seed. I also have “straw flowers” which are long lasting and are in all their glory (and they also self seed and you will get volunteers)! They are a sort of purplish-blue .
I also have hot pink and red Kalanchoes in bloom as well as magenta, red and white geraniums.
Along my entry path, I have Dianthus and they are in fragrant pinks and lavender colors. They tend to spread and fill in a lot by themselves, too. And when I thin them out, I try to transplant to other areas.
My Rosemary has already bloomed and my roses are putting on a lot of foliage and beginning to come out from slumber, but they look like I have neglected them a bit, which I have , sadly. Poor babies.
I love beautiful flowers but I have seen that the rabbit population is up and I have seen some gopher holes, so my work is cut out for me. I am in southern CA.
Last fall, I put out a lot of garlic bulbs around my geraniums because even though they say rabbits don’t really prefer geraniums, I guess the ones in my area were pretty hungry because they started “mowing” my geraniums down, especially the hot pink ones, and I am hoping maybe the garlic will keep them away!
I just love Victoria magazine and it is the only magazine which I “collect” and I have every issue since the inception of it! What a lovely and beautiful inspiration your magazine is for us.
Thank you!
Phyllis,
Your garden is beautiful and I love the raised beds! This time of year always has me yearning to move back south…..it snowed here just two days ago and it will be several weeks before we see perennials emerge! XO, Ashley
Move back!!!!! We miss you here.
It is such a pleasurable treat to receive an email that is so uplifting.
Passing along your happiness. I thank you very much.