Shade And Sun Gardens

This is my first post on my new blog, Garden On Fourth Street.  I was able to import most of my first garden blog, Gardening Outside The Lines, so all is not lost.  If you're reading this, you've found me...yay!  My last few posts have been focused on my full sun gardens in front of the house, because Spring is all about blooms.  Today we're also going to visit my shade gardens under the oaks, around back. Caladiums have returned faithfully, as they do each year.  Along with them, toad lilies, cordylines, hostas, gingers of all kinds, and hydrangeas.

You simply can't beat caladiums for color in the shade, and I love to mix a bunch together for large barrels.

Toad Lilies just beginning to bloom in this border...

Across the yard, this shade garden is planted with a variety of gingers, colocasias, and cordylines.  The large plant to the right, Costus spicatus, Indianhead Ginger.

Indianhead Gingers flowers, with a variegated Ginger Lily in foreground.

One of my favorite Colocasias, 'Mojito'.

First of many Curcuma Ginger blooms...

A lacecap hydrangea that I've had a long time.

And a new one, unnamed, that I found on the clearance rack this year.

Now, back to full sun blooms!  Just as the 'Lemon' daylilies begin to slow down, the orange 'Kwanso' and 'Ditch'  daylilies  join in the parade.  Oranges are my favorite!  Agapanthus and Gaura lindheimeri are still going strong. 

 Gerbera Daisy, in front of  hydrangeas which are beginning to fade to mauve.

Zinnias are still standing, in spite of winds and driving rains a couple days ago...

First Mexican Tithonia bloom.

Hoping your gardens are filled with blooms!  Until next time...

Gardens Attract The Best Visitors

Gardens bring rewards in addition to beautiful  blooms, fresh food, and a healthier body.  As we provide shelter and nourishment for birds and butterflies, we receive the joy of viewing some of nature's loveliest creations close up.  The garden is never more alive and enchanting than when you step into it and see butterflies dancing across the top of blooms.  My Pagoda Flowers have been luring Zebra Longwing butterflies in for weeks.

Pagoda Flowers also entice our smallest feathered friends...a female Ruby-throated Hummingbird.

My bed of Zinnias is where the butterflies are always cavorting.  I can see about half this border from my kitchen window and it's lovely to watch them fluttering from flower to flower.  A Gulf Fritillary...

This Buckeye butterfly is one of the first I've seen this season...

And these little guys, I don't know that I've ever seen them before.  A pair of tiny Fiery Skippers.

This next photo is also a Skipper, Horace's Duskywing.

There have been a lot of Spicebush Swallowtails in the garden also, but they are probably the most nervous butterflies I've ever seen.  This one finally sat for half a second...

Male, Ruby-throated Hummingbird on magenta  'Wendy's Wish' Salvia.

A 'mama' Eastern Bluebird nesting for the second time this season.

Another female Ruby-throated Hummingbird dining on a Hardy Red Gloxinia.  I've been spreading this plant around my shade gardens as it just has the look of  what a hummingbird would want.

Everything is still blooming with wild abandon, although our full sun, rainless days are rushing the blooms toward decline quicker than I would like.  Daylilies, agapanthus, and roses...

Gaura doesn't mind the heat, it sheds it's blooms at the end of each day and begins anew each morning.

Sunny in the morning...

The only shady spot in my front gardens in the afternoon.

I hope you're all having a great weekend...happy gardening.

Late Spring Garden ~ Central Florida

Hell-o to all!  Spring has been altogether lovely this year in Central Florida.  We've had a mix of true spring-like weather, along with some typical, sultry Florida days.  My plan today was to do a post about all my different hydrangeas, but I got side tracked.  I started a new flower bed last fall, which consisted mainly of moving a lot of pots out of one area.  My goal was to have an orange and blue bed, with Pagoda Flowers, Mexican Firebush, and Hydrangeas.  Looking from my new bed to my older Hydrangeas...this is the effect I'm looking for.

Pagoda flowers and hydrangeas...

I'm starting to achieve it on a very small scale with Mexican Firebush and hydrangeas.

The hydrangeas are not quite a year old,  they're the ones I started from cuttings last June.

The 'mother' plants.

The new bed has a long way to go, but I'm a patient gardener.

Anyway, I started following around a beautiful Tiger Swallowtail butterfly this morning, and realized I have better things to post about than Hydrangeas in shade gardens...so on to something new.  Shade gardens will keep, but right now spring has presented me with a lavish display of beautiful blooms to share, and they won't last forever.  Agapanthus could only get better by being adorned by a lovely visitor.

One of the two 'Red Leaf Plum' trees we planted last fall.  My front gardens were lacking in plants with height after we lost our Dogwoods, so these will serve that purpose without getting too large. 

A look at a slice of the garden behind the front fence.  Notice the height of the Agapanthus in the foreground...they're amazing this year.

I don't know if you can see it, but my white Crinum is blooming.

Trapped behind rose canes.

Another visitor to the garden, a Great Crested Flycatcher, who is nesting in a birdhouse out back.

Red 'Challenger', and yellow 'Lemon' daylilies.  Oranges to follow soon.

'Challenger'

Looking back toward the house, to the rose garden...

Zinnias, by the front walkway, with Coneflowers grown from seed.  Waiting (patiently) for the Purple Coneflowers to bloom.

Thryallis is just beginning to bloom, and anything yellow is most welcome now.

Thank you all for visiting my garden.  Please come again.