This Week In My Garden - Lavender Lovelies and "Before Photos"

Look what came home with me from the nursery today! Lavender!!!!! Two different kinds!

I met some of my landscape customers at Hinsdale Nurseries just after 7:00 this morning to tag trees and shrubs for a project that I'm helping them with. I had a few minutes before they arrived so I walked over to check as to whether the new crop of lavender had arrived. The nursery has been sold out for a couple of weeks and I was told that it would be late April or Early May, so I looked..AND THERE IT WAS!!!! Hidcote and Munstead!  So, before anything else, I loaded the lovely lavender ladies into a cart for me! 
Here's the reason:

 This is the flower bed that my family and friends see when they pull into my drive.  It's got a few redeeming qualities but the rest of the bed is a mess. I had a couple of really invasive plants that took over and killed off many of the perennials, the ornamental grass lays all over the bushes and has killed  half of two of them. This bed just needs a good "makeover".

 The soil is good so it's just a matter of changing plant material and amending just a bit for the lavender. I've decided that I want a more "New England Coastal meets French Countryside" feel for this area. The lavender is the first part of my new plant list.

I pinned these to my garden board on Pinterest some time ago in anticipation of this project:

Annie's Annuals via Pinterest

Romantic Home Blogspot via Pinterest

Bing via Pinterest

I've identified the plants in the photos, all of them are hearty in Zone 5 (a couple are biennial) but all should survive having baking hot sun and dry conditions  in the summer with several feet of snow piled on them in the winter. Any plant that can withstand that can live in my yard!

 So, that's what I'll be doing over the next couple of weekends (after garage sales and flea markets, that is!)











Here are a few shots of what's in bloom in my yard today:

My potager, tree peony, allium and foxgloves

Tulips still hanging in there

Tree peony, perennial geranium

Tree peony, allium, bleeding heart, spring anemone

Maybe next week it will warm up enough to make a batch of soil soup. I can't wait to show you!!!

xo,

S