We're busy with new garden plans

I've been out of touch lately, haven't I? Well to catch you up, not much goes on in the winter in Maine so we go to Florida!!! Well, okay so we went for 16 days. We spent it on the beach in a quaint beach town called Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. It's near Pompano Beach (I like to tell people I walk to Pompano Beach every day!)

We seem to have a lot going on here in Maine. Trying to sell our Lake House (http://www.mainelakehouse.blogspot.com/) trying to sell my Mom's house in Nobleboro, Maine so she can move into an independent apartment complex and we're doing some work on our house here in Brewer, Maine. Brewer is a neat place to live. It's grown so much since we moved here nearly 22 years ago. There is a lot to offer by way of shopping and of course we're sister city to Bangor across the river, where you can find just about anything you need.

But back to gardening!

We have to replace two fences that close in our backyard/pool area. They are 22 years old after all and made out of wood that was painted. No wonder they're decayed! So that means moving plants. But that's not all! We cut down a dozen or so trees in our backyard (did I mention hubby wanted to be an Arborist until his knees said no way?) So that means those shade loving plants you see by the fence in my shade garden photo to the right now need to be moved and replaced with sun loving plants!

We decided to go "no care" with vinyl fencing. They are bright white. I want to tone them down somewhat. Here's my plan. The fence you see in the photo is along side our new deck. We spend a lot of time out there and when not outside, we can look out the window and see it. Since the new configuration of the new deck affords better viewing of the back yard where the trees were cut, we planted 31 hostas along the perimeter of the lawn. Yeah, they're in the sun most of the time, but hostas are quite adaptable. Some of the blues and varigated don't like it that much, so they might get replaced next year.

We like a lot of color. So on this side of the fence, I will plant daylilies in shades of yellows, reds and combinations thereof. There is an awesome lily grower in Unity, Maine (http://www.elliesdaylilies.com/) that my garden club friends and I visited a couple weeks ago. Ellie spoke at our club last year and everyone was intrigued to go on a shopping trip.

I will probably put 5 daylilies in front of that fence leaving room for sunflowers in the back that I can plant in the spring. The hummingbirds love the red bee balm, so perhaps with my color scheme, they might look nice as well.

On the other side of this fence we have three lilacs and a flowering quince, that took a bit hit when the trees were taken down. It may not survive :-(

As for the fence on the other side of the house, the side that is facing the road will also be quite colorful in purple and yellow. On the back of the fence I will move the three veronicastrum from the first fence (you can see them in the photo; they are tall and actually have a leaf that looks a tad like something illegal but the blossoms are long and a light shade of purple.) In front of them I plan to have purple and yellow coneflowers. I have two varieties of yellow coneflowers in the Big Sky Series that are tall and erect that I can split and want to buy at least one more. The purple ones spring up in my gardens so I have plenty I can move to this area. I also thought that in the spring I would plant a few cleome in there. I love cleome! And they can grow up to 3 feet tall. They can be purple or pink and have a bit of white on them. I really think they will add some pazzaz to the color scheme. It also helps to have something blooming in white to take your eyes from the very white of the fence. I don't particularly like white coneflower but do have a wonderful Shasta Daisy, 'Becky' that is tall and erect. Come to think of it I have a large white phlox ... oh! .... and I have purple phlox. Ok, now this garden is really growing! See what happens? It's adicting, I tell ya ;-)

Next July I'll take pictures of the new plantings so you can see what I ended up doing.

Oh! I am still working on my project for the New England Region. You can see the first part, which is a list of Maine native plants on the Garden Club Federation of Maine website at http://www.mainegardenclubs.org/ and click on NER PROJECT at the top of the page. I am hoping to have photos soon of potentially invasive plants in Maine and some photos of the native ones you can plant instead. So stay tuned!!!