Beds beside the paddock

The scrawny little beds between the house and the paddock are just getting started. Below is one of the beds on April 21st. It has dahlias and baptisias. If one of the dahlias doesn't come back a baptisia goes right in its place since there's a buried pot there. Beyond that is the bed that turns the corner and wraps around the front of the paddock. Aster 'Miss Bessie' is straight ahead, the two trees on each side are tulip poplars, and above 'Miss Bessie' on top of the hill is one of the neighbor's miniature horses. The mulch is hay. Every winter the horses find some of the hay to inedible (even though it looks and smells OK to me), and what they don't eat goes on the garden as mulch.

If you were to back up in the above picture you'd come across
this bigger bed which houses Baptisia 'Twilight Prairie Blues'.

These pictures were taken on May 4th; the stalks now sport a number of green seed pods.

Not the strong color pairing you see in glossy ads, but lovely nevertheless. A little strange too. The flowers were two-toned when I bought it. The pH affecting the flowers perhaps. The smoky lavender took on gray and chocolate tones as the flower faded. I wonder how it would look with Iris 'Beotie'.

To put it all into perspective -- the small beds, the Baptisia, the entire garden -- here is a view from the top of our hill during the first week of May. At the bottom is a basin that fills up when the creek floods. I chose not to mow the yellow daisies. I think they are beautiful. A lot of them are going to seed now, and as I was filling a wheelbarrow with shavings tonight I saw two male goldfinches fluttering above the seedheads looking like two yellow-and-black butterflies.

There is a bed between the horse's paddock and the driveway that is filled with Rosa palustris and various other things. At the corner is this combination of R. rugosa rubra and Felicia, which I love... the rubra is the most vibrant fuchsia pink and both roses are very fragrant. These pictures were taken in early May before the palustris started blooming.

The rubra seedling is the same color as 'Purple Pavement' (which I expected to be more purple but it's beautiful nonethless), seen here with Tradescentia 'Concord Grape' and 'Zwanenburg Blue'. The rugosa hybrid 'Basye's Purple' is at the corner.

Basye's Purple starts later than my other rugosas and is in full bloom now with the palustris. The
flowers look just like velvet. They start out as a deep red and eventually turn a deep purple/ red.

The Rosa palustris and Purple Milkweed are now in full bloom and I'll show them in the next post.