What's happening in the garden now...

We have been enjoying some beautiful weather here still.  Since it was so late in coming I've been sure to be outside with my family as much as possible, playing in the yard, going to parks and the beach.  I hate to miss a minute of these nice sunny days.  I've started paying close attention to the plants that seem to have handled the crazy weather we've had and plan to do a post soon of my top performers for this summer.  Anything that can handle lots of rain and cool weather and then keep on going once it gets warm and dries out is my type of plant. 
For now I'll share some of what is happening in the front, it was hard limiting it since there is just so much going on.

 Gladiolas and Agastache blooming.  I love the saying on this little sign I found.

 Geranium 'Rozanne'

 The entry garden where the Geranium above is growing.  This is where the Japanese Maple that died last year was growing.  The upside of the tree being gone is that the Hydrangea 'Nikko' has gotten huge and even more full of flowers than usual.  All of the plants in fact seem to be doing really well here right now.  The Rose 'Harlow Carr' in front of the birdbath is between flushes now.

 It was a bit bright here, but there are Asters, Caryopteris, Hollyhocks and Echinacea blooming.

 One of my top favorite bloomers this year is Agastache 'Apricot Sunrise'.  It has been blooming like this for months.

 The water garden in the old washtub.

 Oriental Lilies are blooming now.  I sure wish they lasted longer, but since they don't I try to go out and smell them at least once a day (and make everyone else too).  The tall one has to be about 6 feet tall.  I wish I knew what one it was so I could buy more.

 Up close and personal.

 A dahlia growing in a raised vegetable bed.

 For some reason I always plant red and yellow flowers in this part of the garden.  Coreopsis blooms by Sedum and Monarda 'Jacob Cline' is right behind.

 A new favorite is the Spanish Poppy (Papaver rupifragum), it has been blooming for months and has a nice scent.

 Daylily 'Strawberry Candy' was a new one last summer.  It seems to be a popular one on blogs right now.

 A couple of new containers from this summer.  The one on the left is full of Sedums and I love how it looks.  The other is a mix of all sorts of plants in an old washtub.

 Yeah for the Butterfly Bush finally blooming.  This is the latest it's ever bloomed.

 Phlox 'David' and a mallow.

 I just love how pure white the flowers are.

 A container my husband put together is so pretty right now.  It's hard to see the golden colored lamium that is also growing in the planter.

 A couple of months ago we bought a new potting bench to put on the front porch.  It just didn't look right to me here, too new or something.  So we traded it with the one from the back porch and they both are perfect in their new spots.  This one is old and it will probably last longer than in the rain while the new one will weather a bit on the back deck.

So, that's just a little of what's happening in the front garden right now.  I'm so happy with how it's looking and how much we've been able to enjoy it lately. 

All words and photos in this post are property of A Gardener in Progress.

Some pond inspiration.

Last weekend, back when we had sun, my family and I took a visit to Russell Watergardens to get some inspiration, plants and see the beautiful koi they have.  We usually visit at least once a year and it's always a fun experience when we go.  I had gone earlier in the week with my youngest daughter, but she insisted we return so her dad and big sister could see the big koi they have there now.

 When you first walk into the store there is a large indoor koi pond.  The people that work there always bring the kids food so they can feed the fish.  Both of my girls have gotten very brave and will hand feed them.  The fish practically jump out of the water trying to get to the food.

 Right now they have a HUGE koi being housed there for someone.  If I remember correctly "Grace" is about 7 years old and was living in a greenhouse pond where her water temperature was kept in the 70's.  She is about 40 pounds!  Someone there told me if she was for sale (which she is not) she would be worth... $55,000!

 She is in a very large tank with two other big koi.  She absolutely dwarfs the other koi, and they are very large koi themselves.

 When you exit the store you enter into the display pond area.  They are all beautiful!  One day I would love to have a pond installed by them.  I asked about the plantings and was shown how they plant everything.  They used the black plastic mesh plant pots so that the roots can filter the water.  They used regular pea gravel to plant in, nothing fancy at all.  They also combine several plants into one planter and then put them in the pond.  I had never thought about trying that before.

 There were koi of all different sizes in all of the ponds.  Many people were buying koi the day we visited.

 One of the new plants I bought was called Indian rhubarb (Darmera peltata), it's the plant on the left.  It gets sprays of pink flowers in early spring.  I don't have room for something as large as Gunnera and this to me is a nice substitution.

 Clematises were growing all over the fence behind this pond.

I love this little stream.

I noticed that I have a couple of waterlily buds in my pond, and if it ever warms up again they might bloom.  It was so nice having those few days of sun last weekend, but it's back to the upper 50's and drizzly rain again.  I'm hoping the sun will return so I can put some of the ideas I got from the pond displays into my own pond.

All words and photos are property of A Gardener in Progress.

Petting fish at the Watergardens.

Did you know there was such a thing as "petting fish", kind of like a petting zoo? We found that out this weekend when we visited one of my favorite places. Almost a year ago I did this post on Russell Watergardens. We returned this past weekend to purchase some new fish for our pond to replace the ones eaten by the Heron earlier in the year. As you walk in there is a large indoor pond with the "petting fish". When we have visited other times the kids have always been given Koi food so they could feed the fish, but we had never learned about petting the fish. This time the owner showed my kids as well as another family of girls how to pet the fish.

The large white Koi with black stripes is Tiger, he (or she?) is the oldest one here, 11 years old. I hope one day one of our fish can get to be that old. The average life of a Koi in Japan can be 70 years, and some have even made it to 100 years old.

Just a few of the "petting fish" looking for a handout.

They were also shown how to get the fish to give them a kiss on the nose. Here Sweet Pea stuck her nose in and got a kiss.

I thought I would share some more of the outdoor ponds and plantings at the Watergardens. It's just beautiful there. Each pond made me want to try something new with ours, or maybe just start over one day and get our waterfall to look like this one.

I could see that everything seemed larger since our last visit a year ago.

The waterfall of a small shallow stream.

The Littlest Gardener liked crossing the stone bridge across the stream. There were lots of Pansies planted for color, but it looked as if they were getting ready to change those out with the many flats of summer annuals they had sitting under cover.

Another shallow stream.

These ponds were very deep, probably in the 8 to 10 foot range. They made me a little nervous, but the deep ones were all fenced off pretty well.

I just loved all of the colors of the leaves here, aside from the Pansies there were no flowers blooming. It really proved just how important foliage is to a garden. As you can see the sign to the left the fish in this holding tank were $500...each!

We were told this Crow likes to bathe in this holding tank. The man helping us said that they are well protected from Herons here, but that several families of raccoons lived nearby.

This is what a $700 fish looks like. I couldn't believe that these were not the most expensive fish there though. We were shown another Koi for sale...$4000. It was beautiful, but I'm not sure that would ever be in our budget.

I forgot to take pictures of our fish before they were released into our pond. We chose 3 Shubunkins which are white with spots of orange and black on them and two other Goldfish that are orange and white, I think they are Sarasas.
One last interesting thing I learned there. We were told that Herons actually emit a pheromone which attracts the fish to them. I tried to look up more information about this and was unable to find more, but that would explain one reason why Heron seem to have such an easy time catching fish.