A Walk Through My Flower Garden

As I walk up the stone pathway in front of our house, I’m drawn to admire the flowers blooming in my garden beds. Of course the spotted orange lilies catch my eye first as they boldly stand tall and straight, surrounded by lavender veronica and the curly cue spiderwort sporting clusters of electric purple blossoms. The flower garden has yielded a couple generations of scented geraniums, first a short one, now a taller variety. I love to squeeze the leaves of these geraniums in my fist and then breathe in their lovely, subtle aroma.

One dainty little perennial flower I particularly enjoyed this spring was the prairie smoke plant. I only have two of these little guys, but needless to say their puffy explosions of flowers made me smile every time I looked at them. I am a sucker for anything in the geum genus. The ones I have are the classic plum-colored variety; however, I’m currently drooling over some pink ones I recently saw in a local garden shop. An orange variety may or may not also be calling my name.

I have a very established pink and yellow honeysuckle vine to which I gave a pretty aggressive haircut last fall. It has responded by coming back and blooming with abundance. The flowers spill over, through and around one side of my patio wall. Not only am I enjoying these, but they seem to be a favorite of the hummingbird population. Who needs a feeder when you have a honeysuckle vine profusely climbing in your backyard?

With all the rain and warm weather we’ve had recently, the black-eyed susans are opening in all their glory. They’re interspersed with white and pink phlox, fluffy white tiarella, and some magenta bee balm. We have a particularly chubby type of bumble bees that pretty much spend their entire summer on these flowers. I can’t get enough of these darling bees. It befuddles me as to how they can even fly with their massive size.

Earlier this spring I got my hands on some naked lily bulbs and planted them here and there among the other flowers. Naked lilies are a bit of a magical flower. Their long lily-like leaves emerge in early summer, they are around for a bit, and they then seem to die off. One quickly forgets about them. Then in the heat of late summer, when no one is seemingly paying any attention, these gorgeous pale pink lilies start to bloom.

It’s like they’ve come out of nowhere because the greenery is long gone. We’ve all been writing this plant off as dead or dormant for the year. Yet here they are, blooming up a storm. You’re probably wondering why they’re named naked lilies. It’s because there are no leaves, only stork-legged stems holding the lily blooms. They really do look a bit naked. This is why they pair particularly nicely planted among slightly shorter perennials like hostas, heuchera, or astilbe.

Continuing through my beds, I venture underneath the arching arms of a glorious smokebush tree. The leaves are various shades of plum and wine with massive burgundy puffballs on the end of every branch. Its branches form a delightful arch over the stone path that leads to our front door. In the shadows of this amazing tree grows a plant that doesn’t realize it is close to its demise.

As soon as I have a couple spare hours, I will be digging up a rather large and flourishing patch of garlic chives. Anyone who knows me knows I adore garlic. Not so with garlic chives. If they would mind their manners, it would be a different story. But they don’t. They are quite happy in their cozy little spot and thus are making babies with abandon. I’m finding these offspring in the far flung reaches of the yard.

I’ve been dreaming all spring about what flowers I’m going to replace these with. This is a fairly high value real estate location in my yard, right there next to the front door. So I want to choose carefully. At the moment I’m thinking of planting bergenia, one of my favorite and most recommended plants, but the jury is still out, and I’m up for suggestions.

This is one of my favorite times of year in the flower garden. When we open the windows or when sitting in the garden, the sounds of the birds singing to each other become our background music. I hope you’ll join me in soaking up this lovely time of year.