Blooms & Beyond: Year-Round Color for Your Garden

Wondering how to have year-round color in your garden?   I recently gave a presentation to the Grapevine Garden Club on this topic and the video was posted to YouTube.   Click HERE to check it out!

The plants mentioned in this talk are geared toward the Dallas/Fort Worth area in hardiness Zone 7/8, but if you live in other parts of the country, maybe it will inspire you to think through the seasons and how you can add color to your garden with plants that are hardy in your area.    Click HERE to see the plant list.

Below I've listed the garden centers and resources I mentioned in the presentation.

Here's to hoping you have something colorful in your garden all year long!

Toni :-)

Grapevine Garden Club
grapevinegardenclub.com

Stegall's Nursery & Plant Farm
stegallsnursery.com

Metro Maples
metromaples.com

Neil Sperry
neilsperry.com

aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu

TCMGA
tarrantmg.org

Fort Worth Botanic Gardens
fwbg.org

Backyard Bling #3 - A Bridge to Somewhere

Several years ago I built a dry creek bed in my backyard.

The creek bed serves to catch water from several downspouts connected to underground drains that empty into the creek bed.   This year I had to reroute the tail end of the creek bed and transplant a Japanese maple whose roots were being exposed because of soil eroding away from the water running through the sometimes not-so-dry creek bed.

As I finished the creek bed revision, I thought, it sure would be cute to have a little bridge going over the creek bed.   I have been coveting admiring the little blue bridge in the woodland garden of Deb's Garden.  With the garden tour date quickly approaching, I figured there was no time like the present to add even more backyard bling to my garden.

So I got online and found just the bridge I wanted from DesignerBridges.com.    It came unassembled, but after the recent construction projects my husband and I have tackled, we knew we were up to the challenge.   They had already predrilled all of the holes for us AND they had written instructions to follow.   This was going to be a piece of cake!  And it was!!

Here is the finished project :-)

A flagstone path leads through my shady backyard.  The bridge connects the flagstone walk as it meets the dry creek bed.

One of my favorite shade plants, Farfugium (Leopard Plant), is in the foreground, and the transplanted Japanese maple is in the background.  

The bridge is made out of red cedar, but I added a natural cedar stain to the bridge after we assembled it to give it more protection from the elements.

This concludes our construction projects, but there is still more bling to come...

Please visit again to see another "tweet" addition to our garden.

Toni :-)

P.S.  I have not been paid to endorse DesignerBridges.com, but I have to say, I was very impressed with the quality of this product.  The online ordering was a snap!  The materials arrived in a very short time.  The cedar lumber was excellent quality, and the instructions were simple to follow.  I am so happy with our new little bridge, and I would highly recommend this company to anyone!

Backyard Bling #1 - We've Been Building Again

A few months ago we built the potting bench of my dreams.

It turned out to be such an easy project, that we decided to try building a table for our back patio.   As I did with the potting bench, I drew out the plans and determined all of the measurements.  Then I paid another visit to my local Lowe's, and one of the nice guys in the lumber department cut all of the lumber to my specifications.

One willing accommodating husband, an electric drill, and a box of screws later, here is the table right after we finished building it.  I used plain pine lumber for the table top and bottom shelf and treated turned posts for the legs, cut to the desired height.

Hanging above the table I have a decorative iron and wood piece.  I love the paint finish on this piece, so decided to try to paint the table with a similar finish.    Here's a close-up of the inspiration for the paint finish.

Here is the table after painting it.   I just used several colors of old leftover paints and stains that we had in the garage, and added the paint in layers until I achieved a finish that was fairly close to my inspiration piece.

Scrolled iron brackets and clavos nail heads were added to bring a little more bling to this backyard thing.

A few more garden accents were added, and this project was complete...just in time for the garden tour!

Stay tuned for more backyard bling -- believe it or not, we are not done building just yet!

Toni :-)