A Very Personal Garden

The last Saturday in April was a busy time in my small town, and for me. It was opening day at our farmers' market where I volunteered for a while. I then hopped over to a Master Gardener plant sale sponsored by the Ruston Garden Club (where fortunately I only bought one plant!). My main goal there was to purchase a ticket for their garden tour and see if I could quickly make it to at least two of the gardens on the tour before heading back to the market to help tear down. The first garden I toured, showcased here, was the very personal garden of Noula Rodakis.

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The garden is European in style with formal beds filled with roses, boxwood and iris. Yet it also has informal areas and is very much a garden of memories for Noula. Noula is a native of Greece and her love of the Mediterranean is evident in the fruit trees and veggies she cultivates, as well as the relaxed seating areas throughout her garden. This garden was made for enjoying, and Noula is the gardener here (not a landscape service).

Entrance to vegetable garden

She has a lovely enclosed vegetable garden with a multitude of veggies, including her favorite - fava beans.

Fava beans

Fava beans aren't something you see in every Southern garden! Noula also has other veggies and som espaliered fruit trees.

An espaliered fruit tree (pear?)

More veggies

There are citrus trees scattered throughout her backyard, which amazes me since they're only half-hardy here. And another amazing plant? A giant (for Zone 8a) olive tree!

Yes, Virginia, olive trees will grow in north Louisiana (this is on the south side of the house, so it's somewhat protected).

A garden path follows a natural swale in the side yard.

An artful display

Delphiniums are not the easiest flowers to grow here.

A beautiful bay laurel tree

A grapevine covered pergola outside the art studio

Here's one of my favorite spots - a lovely seating area under a grapevine-bedecked pergola. I had the pleasure of joining Noula and her lovely daughter Olitsa here last Orthodox Easter when she had a magnificent spread of Greek food. Can you believe she laid this patio herself?

Shall we peek through the windows into the art studio?

I love her light-filled studio.

Noula's art studio

Looking from the art studio patio to the side yard

And here is the lovely Noula herself.

Noula Rodakis

What I like most about Noula's garden is that it's an expression of what she loves - her birthplace, travel, art, flowers, food, and her family.

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2013. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, May 2013

Partial view from my back porch

This may be a lame GBBD post since I don't have much time but please forgive me. At least this time you'll get a few longer views instead of the fun close-up ones. The spring garden is starting to hit all its cylinders, as they say.

Poppies, larkspur, and sweet peas

This bed looks rather like a cottage garden. In reality it's a bit of a hot mess what with the plants stomping on each other. But I'm still enjoying it. The red poppies are 'Legion of Honor', the sweet peas are 'April in Paris', and the larkspur, just now starting to bloom, are 'French Alouette', all from seed from Renee's Garden (I should mention they were freebies). The sweet peas are not my most favorite ones I've grown. There is a ton of green growth and the delicate purple rim on the blooms gets lost from just a few feet away. But they're nice and fragrant and long stemmed. Next to the larkspur are some opium poppies I got from the Chelsea Psychic Garden in London. I can't wait to see what they look like when they bloom. But soon I will be ripping this all down to make way for some herbs, a new trellis, and to give the other plants such as the black-eyed Susans some room.

Flowering tobacco and gaura

Bloomers today in this bed include 'Pink Fountains' gaura, a dwarf form of guara, and flowering tobacco (Nicotiana sp.). Also, that tall, skinny purple thing is Verbena bonariensis. The hummers have been hanging around here. The large mound behind this bed is 'Black and Blue' salvia just starting to bloom.

I have lots more blooming in my other beds including roses, daylilies, amsonia, coreopsis, 'Victoria Blue' salvia, Lanai Bright Pink verbena, a late-blooming daffodil called 'April Queen', and even my lettuce and arugula, ha! I hope you hop on over to Carol's blog to see what else is blooming around the world on this Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2013. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

All Things Gardening = Happiness

It's spring fever time at last, thank goodness. Naturally I've been immersed in all things gardening and I thought I'd show you a few of them. A few weeks ago I took a trip to Austin. There I visited a number of my favorite nurseries so I could pick up the organic products and interesting plants I can't find in my small town. I also met up with some of the Austin garden bloggers and had Pam Penick sign my copy of her wonderful new book Lawn Gone!. You really need to pick this book up if you are interested in reducing the size of your high-maintenance lawn. It's very well written and organized, and has some great ideas.

Pam Penick and her book Lawn Gone!

I also visited my friend Ann to catch up and saw some really cool things in her yard. Her partner made these cool cedar supports for their evergreen sumacs.

The lax limbs of evergreen sumac are held up by simple cedar support.    

Eve's necklace, Sophora affinis, a native Texas understory tree, grows well in Ann's backyard overlooking Barton Creek (it obviously likes limestone!).

Look closely at this next photo of a bird bath. I would actually call it a bird attractant since it's much more than a bath.

Drip, drip, drip

This little bird attractant is amazing. Inside the old water pump is a hose. The hose is buried underground, and uphill from here near the house it's attached to a rain barrel. That rain barrel is an overflow barrel for another rain barrel farther uphill. How she gets it to just slowly drip, I don't know. But the sound of dripping water is very attractive to birds. They've also installed a little cattle panel fence behind the pump for the birds to escape to or just hang out. How cool is that?

Texas bluebonnets, Lupinus texensis

These little bluebonnets are not in Texas but rather in my own backyard! Not bad for an area of the U.S. that usually gets a lot more rain than Texas. Now for some more things in my backyard...

Speaking of rain, here's what we got this week from that storm that swept through the country. We needed a little rain but certainly not this much!

A hellebore I bought last fall at the North Central Louisiana Master Gardener sale. Pretty!

Buds of the fragrant burkwood viburnum, Viburnum burkwoodii

Nicotiana is up and happy. They make the bees happy, too.

The highly invasive Chinese wisteria, Wisteria sinensis, is creeping over the fence and trying to invade my backyard (again). The American wisteria, Wisteria frutescens, is a much better option. 

Hinckley's columbine, Aquilegia chrysantha var. hinckleyana, also called Texas gold columbine, is a native that's doing well on my little hillside.

The new birdbath I picked up in Austin

The peony is coming up!

I always get a thrill when the peony starts growing. I think it's because in Austin I wouldn't have even dreamed of growing one. But I have soil now (some of you folks know what I mean!). So even though I love to grow native plants as much as possible for the wildlife, I have a few plants that are just for me. My little stretch goals, so to speak. All of this makes me happy. I'm sure if you've read this far, gardening makes you happy, too. :-)

This post was written by Jean McWeeney for my blog Dig, Grow, Compost, Blog. Copyright 2013. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.