Garden Detective

Fiesta™ Salmon Double Impatiens

The perennial gardens are coming along, albeit slowly. Not one of the 30 liriopes (lily turf) I planted survived. They all look like stiff, dry, brown pieces of straw. On the plus side, the calamity has given me first hand experience with the customer service folks over at Michigan Bulb Company. One simple phone call and my money was very easily refunded. I'm glad about that and feel good about the company. Had they given me a hard time I would have written them off. Still, I don't think I'll buy bare root again.

As a result, I have some bare patches in what I had hoped would be a lush bed of liriopes so I just added some annuals to fill in the blanks.

BabyWing® White Begonias

I'm trying out some new introductions this year, and so far I'm quite pleased. In keeping with my preferred orange-purple-pink color scheme, I arranged some Fiesta™ Salmon Double Impatiens around some pansies on the street side of the fence.

I potted up some BabyWing® White Begonias with purple Easy Wave petunias, which I also added to a couple of beds. Easy Waves are great because they spread beautifully while reaching 10 inches in height. Window boxes spilling over with the Easy Wave Beachcomber mix, a combination of blue, shell pink and coral reef, make the house look happy. As far as annuals go, this year they're my favorites.

Easy Wave Beachcomber petunia mix

Behind the korean lilacs and Nepeta "Walkers Low" catmints, I planted some red Aztec verbena and more Purple Easy Waves for what's becoming quite a striking display.

Though the backyard has been dug up for a new cesspool, I worked around the mess to continue my vegetable garden tradition, though this year I'll only be growing a couple of varieties of tomatoes (Burpee's Porterhouse and some San Marzano plums) along with basil, parsley and

Maracas Brazilian Fireworks

mint. My father sent me home from a recent visit to Florida with 5 rappini di broccoli seedlings and a 7-foot-tall fig tree from his garden. We drove 20 hours on I-95 with that tree on the roof of the mini van. It survived nicely and is thriving in the backyard. The rappini, however, weren't as lucky.

To add a little color to the brown dust out back, I planted Maracas Brazilian Fireworks in pots and placed them on the deck railing. Now all we need is grass and a game plan for the newly blank canvas. It's a shady yard -- any ideas?