Garden Design: Dark-dreamer

In the extreme heat we've been having, I've been playing inside, working on some different garden concepts. In this "Garden Design" post I've focused on the dark side of plants. Not the evil or temperament, but the hue of these gorgeous plants! There is something so haunting and unique about dark flowers and foliage. I found some great plants as examples and I hope it inspires you, like it did me. The contrast of light green foliage and dark, almost black flowers and dark purple-black foliage of other species.

Centaurea montana "Black Sprite",  Lillium "Landini", Black Mondo Grass, Helleborus hybridus "Onyx Odessey",
Heuchera "Geisha's Fan", Rudbekia occiddentalis "Black Beauty"

Clematis Recta "Velvet Night",  Pennsemon "Dark Towers", Sedum "Bertram Anderson",
 Hellborus "Black Diamond",  Dianthus "Velvet & Lace",  Eupatorium rugosum "Chocolate"

Cimicifuga simplex "Hillside Black Beauty", Phlox paniculata "Wendy House", 

Geranium psilostemon "Bressingham Flair", Aster lateriflorus "Prince" 

I freaking love Tradescantia/ Spiderwort!

I love Tradescantia. otherwise known as Spiderwort! It is possibly one of my favourite plants in the garden, but like having multiple children, you can never just pick one favourite. This plant is amazing!

Clockwise from top left; "Concorde Grape", "Bilberry Ice", "Osprey", "Blue and Gold"

It comes in many more forms and colour variations, with typically a purple or violet bloom and green foliage. It likes partial shade, and only a few hours of direct sun and moist soil, although it will do nicely in a drought. The flowers only last about a day or two, but bloom consistently throughout the spring/summer season and even into the fall! I also love how they look like a grass and many other types of flowers depending on where you have them, a true chameleon. 

 Here is my Spiderwort blooming this year. "Sweet Kate" is the variety.

My favourite nursery has this variety in stock now and I want it!... Canadian Tire also had a lovely variety I haven't seen around, and I'm going to investigate that one.

"Sunshine Charm"

Cactus and Planters: Before and After!

Recently I have been taking on several small projects around the garden, in hopes that we can improve the overall curb appeal and infrastructure of the gardens. We have many great plants that we have collected and we're hoping we can expand and sell them to subsidize our garden next season. One plant I've been meaning to fix up for a while is our Peele Island prickly pear cactus. She's worthy of this because it's an endangered species...

 Here is the before and after of the cactus, man it was a pain to clean up! It was painful, but worth it, it can now spread a bit more and I can start taking pads and propogating them. I have plans of planting some hardy succulents around her with maybe some small grasses. You can see I've planted some hen-and-chicks to the right.

Here is my DIY planter fix! I found that new planters were very expensive and even more so if they were earthware or clay. I had a large bucket of dark purple (our blackberry harvest mix) which I have been using on our front door and garage doors, I used some extra paint and cleaned up the old pots. I'm hoping to get another season or two our of the paint job. I found some great plants for my planters;
- Echinacea "Strawberry Shortcake"
- Martin's Spurge "Ascot Rainbow"
- Canna lilly "Tropical White"
- Sweet-Po-Vine "Sweet Georgia Deep purple"
- Regal Geranium "Bravo and Elegance Light"
- Snow on the Mountain
- Electric Blue Lobelia
- White Bacopa
- Dianthus Barbarini Red Rose Bicolour
- Calibrachoa (small petunia) "Callie Star Pink"
- Purple Oxalis


I'm also going to plug President’s Choice® Moisture Lock™ Soil. i picked up one bag of this stuff as Zehrs and it went a long, long ways. I need a bit more for my largest planter, but I am very satisfied. It has a minimal foam content and has little peices of terra-cota, it really does hold the soil moist and fluffy for a long time! Pretty economical aswell. Even through are heat-wave and dry spell, it held up very nicely.