Garden Decorating Fun | Daylily Haiku Thursday! | a girl and her garden

<posted July 11, 2013> This is H. 'Apricot Champagne' - a daylily that if you dont know it, you should absolutely add it to your collection. It is a tall stunner.

In the middle of June, amidst tornadoes and thunderstorms I made the 6 hour drive to Tulsa, Oklahoma to be a part of their Summer Daylily Meeting and Garden Tours. This region serves Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma and is a neighbor to my own Region 2.

There were so many fun surprises in the gardens I visited on Saturday, June 15 I thought that I would show you some fun accoutrement I spied while daylilying.

I gasped at the beautifully decorated outdoor living space that matched the square footage of my first house. I just adored this color blue as the accent to red. Lots of vintage covered pillows dotted the chairs for whimsy in an otherwise magazine-styled setting. I counted 28 seats in this area alone. That is a lot of entertaining, and that was just one deck.

In that same garden, they had gates welded to illustrate and immortalize important moments in their family life. This one is of their daughters - and notice the fence to the right shows the start of the piece showing their dogs. Another one documented their courtship and wedding!

I liked these traditional "English" garden colors planted by the fire seating area shown below. I heard they collect the fallen branches all year and have a blowout fire in the fall. This was a huge property with an orchard, huge tree house complex with rope bridges and zip lines as well as two pools, a hot tub and quite a vegetable garden. Heaven, indeed.

Visiting a smaller, and more realistic suburban garden, I spied this potting bench, painted just the right shade of blue to offset the terracotta accents and galvanized what-nots. I like the choice of color a lot.

That same garden had lots of "pops" of interest floating about. I like this fisherman's basket planting...

And this simulated dry creek bed leading to the bottle tree. Very clean, and still quite fun.

I had never seen this use of rebar and blue bottles! If you love the blue bottle trees, but don't know a welder and don't have money to spend on one, this is a very neat idea to modify the idea! They almost look like cobalt cat tails! (Have you seen Felder Rushing's book/website on Bottle Trees? He is the keynote speaker at next summer's St. Louis regional meeting!)

There was also this cool mobile on the porch that danced with pictures of the garden and the daylilies. What a great idea for a Farmer's Market Display or a display at your next Plant Sale when the plants aren't in bloom.

I Googled "photo mobile" and found some really cool ones in the $10 range. This would also be a cool way to display a collection of postcards, a series of birthday pictures or photos of your kids' art projects. After Googling, I of course ordered some. This is the one I picked.

Don't Google this. You will suddenly be overtaken with the urge to build stuff and you'll be at Michael's buying enough supplies to "just make a quick project."

I know how that goes, folks. It's never pretty.

At this same suburban garden, there were great container plantings all over. This one gave off a very cottage-y feel and the feathery textures really set off the containers. Very well done.

I must say that I have never visited a garden with a white spiral staircase in it - except in my wildest dreams. Here it is at the Ross garden; the third stop of the day.

It shows up in many of my photos from that garden. What a dream. I would be doing Scarlett O'Hara monologues from it daily, complete with dirt smudges and back-of-hand-on-forehead. In the dress. Twice.

The rain barrel was even adorned with loveliness. (above, left - and there is that staircase again...) I love the weathered look of the barrel, the color of the hose, the accent plantings...all works completely as a beautiful vignette. I think its important when you have a focal piece like this barrel that you make "it's frame" the best it can be to get the most out of the experience! If this had a bright green hose with a yellow stripe down it instead of the neutral color, it would be a different experience. I like thoughtful gardens and I usually like the gardeners even more! ;)

I also found this use of moss and a grapevine wreath for an umbrella display of calladium bulbs (above, right.) What a neat splash of color and a great way to cover that typically ugly center hole of all umbrella tables. Her garden was also accented in red, but the punch color here was not blue, but a "girl scout" green (much like these calladium...) I did see some denim strewn about for color, too, and it was a nice diversion from the red.

This garden also had these blown glass hearts (above) all over the shady area of the garden, above the bubbling waterfall and pond area. I spied quite a few and found their presence to be rather comforting. Although I'm not sure if they held any specific significance, they somehow felt like memorials to memories - floating in the air.

I cannot end this post without showing you the best outdoor garden meeting space at someones personal home that I have ever seen. Here is a shot of the outbuilding at the Ross garden.

I'll give you a minute to take all that fabulousness in.

I spent so much time in here, imagining the classes, the clinics, the shows, the discussions, the laughter, the fun and the friendship that happens around that table, on that rug, by that gorgeous dresser, among the cool signage, with those great curtains, surrounded by all the very purposeful "stuff" in this space.

I see a lot of daylily gardens, each year friends. LOTS of them. Sometimes I am moving so fast through them I feel like Clark and Ellen Griswald on their stop to the Grand Canyon. The daylilies always are the focus of the show, but when gardens are dotted with personality and the family of the gardener, they are even more interesting and meaningful for visitors. When a gardener invites you into their yard, its like they open their chest and show you their beating, green heart. I always tread lightly and leave behind some of my own joy.

It's kind of a big deal.