My Half Acre of Paradise

I’ve been working on this whenever I get a chance, which hasn’t been often enough, since I’m also finishing our basement this spring; today I finally finished planting all the new flowers in our long backyard flowerbed, after a lot of weeding, giving away plants I don’t want anymore (or tossing some that became like weeds), and moving the desirable perennials toward the back of the border (since most are moderately tall) and into groups that mass the same colors together.

This is the flowerbed I wrote about last year, when I gathered advice from the GardenWeb landscaping and annuals forums. I’ll post some photos later, but
for now, here’s the list of annuals I bought last week at Cook’s Farm and Greenhouse, a local nursery, and at Wal-Mart (about $120 spent on around 240 plants):

• Salvia coccinea ‘Lady in Red’
• Salvia farinacea ‘Victoria Blue’
• Salvia splendens ‘Vista Purple’
• Trailing vinca ‘Mediterranean Punch’ (I didn’t even know there was a trailing variety of the annual vincas! Very cool.)
• Gazania ‘Kiss Rose’
• Sweet potato vine ‘Blackie’
• Sweet potato vine ‘Margerita’
• Verbena ‘Obsession Lilac’
• Verbena ‘Obsession Red”
• Verbena ‘Romance Scarlet/Eye’
• Verbena ‘Heirloom Light Blue’
• Zinnia ‘Profusion White’ (just a few for accents)

I also had these plants growing from seed or cuttings that I mixed into the bed:

• Wave petunias in shades of pink/lavender (These are the product of my obsessive garden nuttiness — I took cuttings off of petunias in downtown SLC last fall, just before they all froze to death in the city planters. If you bring them indoors, they live like a perennial. I’m not sure it was worth the time to keep them alive all winter, though!)
• Alyssum ‘Oriental Nights’
• Lychnis (gives some gray foliage as well as small rose-red flowers)

In addition, I used these perennials that were already in the bed, but I moved them around to form groups of the same plants:

• Campanula glomerata
• Lavatera tauricensis
• Purple and white coneflowers (I can’t remember which ones are white! We’ll see if I need to move them again after they bloom.)
• Dianthus deltoides ‘Brilliancy’
• Shasta daisies
• Lavenders (these didn’t get moved - they’re too big)
• One lonely chrysanthemum
• Salvia nemorosa ‘East Friesland’
• Rocky Mountain Penstemon

So far, I think it’s really going to look good! The bed is chock full of interesting plants, with lots of variety. I did get a lot of salvias, but they’re all different colors, shapes and heights. I also got a lot of verbenas, but I varied the colors a bit, and I think it’s going to work well.

My Kwanzan (or Kanzan) cherries really came into bloom during the past four days or so. This one is the best of the three I have.

Below you can see my row of sand cherries (flowering cherry shrubs) in peak bloom at the same time the Prairiefire crabapples are starting to bloom well. I don’t think these blooms usually coincide this well, but with the long, cold winter-spring we’ve had, it has changed many of the bloom times. The crabapples have hit peak bloom nearer the first of May in past years, but right now, they’ve just opened their buds this week.

Here’s a closeup of the crabapple blooms (left) and a group of Iberis sempervirens, or candytuft (right). I transplanted some of the candytuft in the front flowerbed last fall, and it’s growing now, too. In fact, I think everything I transplanted last fall is coming up well now.

Lastly, I’m really enjoying this clump of Arabis or rockcress. I wish it would flower like this all summer!

Last week, we had two nights, I think, with low temps around 26°. That’s cold enough to kill some cherry buds, and I’m not sure how mine are doing. By the way, mine are Lapins cherries.

This branch is showing a lot of brown cherry blossoms, but I really don’t know if that’s simply what they look like after they’re done or if it was frost damage that created the brown withered look.

Despite the presence of some blossoms turning brown, there still were plenty of newly opened blossoms like these ones. I’m pretty sure we’ll get a decent crop of cherries from these trees. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

My Krauter Vesuvius flowering plum tree hit peak bloom last week, and the blossoms are pretty well fallen off now. Here are two photos from last week on April 29th, when it was probably right at its peak:

This is my Mericrest nectarine, and it really has pretty blossoms. Here are a few shots with slightly different lighting. They were taken on April 29 - a week ago. Everything is late blooming this year, because of our long, cold, “La Nina” winter, and it sure is nice to see things finally blooming.

Here’s a shot from up by my patio, looking down:

I am positive that this tree escaped frost damage in our cold snaps the past few weeks, since peaches (nectarines are really a kind of peach) can handle low temperatures fairly well. I can almost taste the nectarine cobblers at the end of summer!