Who here likes to grow flowers? Favorites?
 

In addition to my tomato addiction, I am becoming more and more interested in growing flowers.

I was wondering what some of my fellow tomato-heads might enjoy growing, besides toms and veggies.

I seem to have an attraction to vine plants....moonflowers, morning glories, etc. I also LOVE oriental lilies. My dad bought me three pots of stargazer lilies that are just beginning to bloom....they are in pots on our front steps. They are just beautiful and smell heavenly.

I am also beginning to have an interest in roses, although I know nothing about them (yet!)

Do you all have flower gardens? I would love to hear about them!

Jennifer

I love my flower gardens. It gives me something nice to look at while I eat my tomatoes!

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Geez Sherry!

VERY nice! We share similar taste in varieties, but your gardens are mature. My gardens are just 1 year, so need a little time.

Are those photos from Alaska? Even more impressive, if so!

My first love has always been flowers, especially perennials and especially fragrant perennials.

My maternal grandparents had the largest nursery in the tri-city areas of Albany, Schenectady and Troy for many years and I worked there summers until I went off to college.

So I've been up close and personal with annuals, perennials and roses and the like for many many years.

It wasn't until I moved back East from Denver in 1982 that I could really do what I wanted to, and then I went a bit crazy.

My long perennial bed was 250 ft long by 8 ft wide, with ells going off that, then I had a circular garden in the middle of the large lawn that was 25 ft across.

At one time I had about 150 miniature roses as well as many heirloom type shrub roses and I hybridized the miniature ones.

I also had well over 100 different daylily cultivars and I bred them as well.

Without trying to list all that I grew I'll just say that my favorites were Dianthuses of all kinds and peonies, of which I had about 50 cultivars as well as about 20 really old ones that were first planted by my grandmother in the late 1800's. Some were obvious to ID, such as Festiva Maxima, but others were just known as the rose one, the pale one, etc.

I speak in the past tense since when I moved here to my new location in 1999 while I love the place I have with 30 acres and my own waterfall and brook running thru my property, it's mostly rocky.

My brother helped me move up here many of my daylilies and peonies and all the peonies were heeled in at someone else's place until I could transfer them up here, but that never happened, so now I have to have visitation rights.

There are three smallish raised flower beds in the front that were here when I moved in, and I did pull out and redesign those with various things such as Monarda, Pulmonaria, Shasta Daisys, Astilbe, iris, pinks, Campanula, daylilies and more, oh, and my heirloom hollyhocks, again from Gram's old garden that I saved when I moved back East .

I went further than just creating all those flower beds when I moved back East and created huge herb gardens, a fruit orchard, blueberries, a bed of 100 strawberry plants for just my mother and myself, LOL, and started an asparagus bed and tranplanted some of the older rhubarb cultivars as well.

So I wasn't just out there in the mater patch fooling around, I was also growing every other type of veggie as well as working well into the evenings working with my flowers.

And I was never happier than doing all of that gardening between about 1983 and 1998.

One of my big projects here at my new location was to breed Paeonia tenuifolia, the fernleaf peony, but with my decreased mobility that project never got off the ground. I have a good friend in Holland who has one of the largest peony collections in the world and thinks nothing of dropping a few thousand on one of the new Japanese introductions, and it was he who was going to supply me with the germplasm I needed, but as I said, it never came to be.

Just today Freda was here doing Spring cleanup and lawn mowing and I discussed with her what needed to be done with and to my flower beds out front.

How I wish I could get out there and do things myself, but what is, is.

for me ...
heirloom mums, canas, bleeding hearts,
bee-balm, purple cones, tulips, and roses ~

Tom

Catntree -- These photos are my gardens in Alaska. We've been gardening in this location for 12 years now. Thanks for your kind words.

John -- Thank you! Where is it that you garden? Lilacs are a favorite of mine also. In fact I just bought my first white one only this week! EDIT: Oops! Why didn't I notice that you are in Central Connecticut?!

I like anything that attracts bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds to my yard. :) I especially like Salvias and lavenders. My veggie garden also always includes borage, sunflowers, calendulas, zinnias, and cosmos. I think Tithonia is gaudy and kind of ugly, but I'm planting it again this year because my hummingbirds love it.

-Kristy

1/3 of my seed starting in the basement was tomatoes, peppers, and broccoli, the other 2/3 were flowers. This year I started:

achillea, coleus, limnanthes, linanthes, lychnis, mesembryanthemum, salpiglossis, wild bergamot, heliotropes, rudbeckia, silene, snap dragons, simorphotheca sinuata, forget me nots, 4 o'clocks, malva, a host of zinnia varieties, morning glories, scabious, cockscomb, convolvulus (bush), and ganzania.

Bought: cannas and impatiens (I don't have the room to grow as many as I want)

perenials out there looking gorgeous: sweet william, other dianthus, bunny tails, phlox, and more.

I love, love flowers.

Christine

I love growing flowers. I especially like scented flowers - roses, oriental and aurelian lilies, lavender, peonies, phlox, dianthus, and many more. I just got my first iris, a variety named Immortality I chose because of the scent and color. We have a good mix of annuals and perennials. My favorite flowers are Shirley Poppies even though they have no scent.

We also grow a few veggies and herbs. Another interest of mine is growing plants to use for natural dyes. I've grown weld, indigo, dyers coreopsis, Hopi red dye amaranth, black hollyhock, marigold, and have seeds for others.

Edit to add:

We also have blueberries, lingonberries and strawberries and just planted an apple tree. We had a northern hardy cherry tree at our old place. A fruit tree has become an essential part of our garden.

Zinnias are my favorites. Oklahoma Series and Big Red are my favorites. Also have to have alyssum, lobelia, and cosmos, nastutiums and vinca each year. I just have a patio for flowers but I love them all.


Michael

Well, the tulips, daffs and muscari are in their glory right now. I do favor the bulbs a bit as the perennials are still just waking up. Gotta love the 'Seussian' globe alliums, too.

However, I look forward to the summer/fall blooms of: Delphs, foxglove, dahlia, clematis, azalea, morning glory, sunflower, monarda, peony, tree peony, euphorbia.......I have a varied collection of daylily-as a landscaper I grew to appreciate the toughness and variety of these long-bloomers. Iris, though short-lived in bloom have come a long way-with rebloomers, etc, so I use Iris a lot more, now....I am into Japanese Iris, lately. I have a rock garden, herb garden.....a naturalised streambed with snowberry, buttonbush, marsh marigold, etc; that I'm still working on.

I like viburnum and lillies!!!!....but the red lilly beetle and viburnum worm are limiting my use of those now. I favor azaleas over Rhodos, and like fothergilla, smokebush, golden rain tree, dogwood, magnolia, flowering crab.....

I have a fruit orchard just getting established and the plum, apple, and peach blossoms are great right now....

I could go on and on about my old farm.......I'll spare you all the details, but between renovating the interior and the agricultural renovation.....it's pretty much a full-time job.

I absolutely adore flowers of all kinds, growing uo on a pot plant nursery walking through all the flowering plants at different stages of development. Those where the days.
Walking in the veld near Cape Town, the Drakensberg or even in Gauteng in natures garden seeing all the beautiful proteas, Ericas, gazanias, wild impatients, clivias, Mesembryanthemums, Lithops, geraniums and many, many others.
Seeing the [i]Gerbera jamesonii[/i] in its natural habitat is an experience.
Or driving through Namaqualand in flowering time seeing the flowering carpets.
Trying to emulate such vast flowering gardens is close to impossible. And the space I currently have available allows for 10-12 clivias only and a few other plants.
Somewhere in the future I'll have more space again.

Dave -- I hope you can share some pictures with us of the amazing things you see there!

I also love zinnias. Partly because they're so easy and make such great cut flowers but also because I just love all those colors mixed together. My favorites are Lilliput and State Fair. I also love portulaca because it reminds of both of my grandmothers and because it's so great for my sandy soil here.