Rosy Plans for the Year

Rosa 'Scepter d' Isle'

Rosa 'Ferdinand Pritchard'

Rosa 'Gertrude Jekyll'

*All Rose photos in this post from David Austin Roses, US

While the snow was still flying here in Pennsylvania and a hot cup of tea was an imperative (!), I spent an evening sitting on the floor planning out our vegetable gardens for the summertime...

End of the Month View: One More Path...

Pergola Garden with our new pea gravel walk this week.

Our new Pergola Garden (so called for the invisible pergola... see it on the plan) was in need of some major changes with the walks in order to accommodate my new gardens. In July, I posted photos of this garden with just the hedges in place. We had a friend volunteer to come over and show my husband how to manually remove the sidewalks by using sledge hammers and wood jacks, which worked like a charm. Amazingly, he removed the long curve from the large yew bushes in a week... see below to compare.

Havenwood ~ GBBD October 2014

Native asters, Doellingeria umbellata, flowering away at our new garden this autumn.

Welcome to my new garden in Pennsylvania, zone 5 for the autumn!

I have been hard at work this year to put in many new garden area according to my garden master plan (see it here). Before getting to bulb planting yesterday, I took a walk around to capture some of the little fall flowers that are already blooming away here at Havenwood...

Projects Around Havenwood

Filling in the lily pond for the year...

Autumn is in full swing in Pennsylvania... the last of my children's soccer games are on this Saturday, the leaves are all looking a bit less green and more yellow, there is an urgent need to get some garden pots washed and stacked before snow is here, and we have had our first light frost so the counter is stacked high with green tomatoes and tiny watermelon that might be worth a bite or two.

Bulbs are going in at a terrific rate around here, with 100 per day as my goal. We had 2,500 on our order this year, as I am excited to get many different varieties naturalizing around Havenwood. Only the tulips will remain to be planted after today, which need to wait until the ground temperatures become lower (after a hard frost) to discourage early growth before spring. I did chose many of the varieties that I posted on my How to Chose a Tulip Combination post.

360 "Before Flowers Tour" at Havenwood

Laying out the Pergola Garden this week.

I am working between rain showers this week to layout the Pergola Garden, which I posted original before photos of last week. I realized that a certain window upstairs would give me a really nice view to look at the developing proportions of my design, and I thought you might like seeing it too! So out came my camera. Then I realized that I could get good views of most of the garden by walking out on one roof and looking out other windows...

So, ta da! Here is your (almost) 360 degree, aerial tour around Havenwood Gardens this week.

Beginning the Pergola Garden

Hedging surrounding the new Pergola Garden at Havenwood.

Hello all! It has been a full month!

A few weeks ago, we were down in West Virginia to work on a garden I designed for a family there... more on that soon. :) Then we were back down south to Charlotte, NC for the inspiring Inkwell family conference. It was sponsored by all the wonderfully creative people at the Story Warren, including my husband, the gifted author of The Big Old Garden, behind the Big Old House series... humm.... wonder where he got those ideas ;)

Then we ran home (actually, a 10 hour drive) so that I could take three RHS exams to complete their Level 2 Certificate in the Principles of Plant Growth, Propagation & Development. I think that they went well! Now I just need to wait patiently until September to find out for sure. :)

In the mean time, we have been planting up a storm of yew bushes around here to working away at our final plan for the new gardens at Havenwood. We have 50 in the ground as I post these photos today...