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Snapped this photo today between rain showers. My humble little bungalow has only got something close to full sun(7 hrs per day) in this central space of the small front yard. The much larger back yard is understory meadow, shaded by 5 oak trees.

So I had to get creative, and I must say I am pleased with my cottage garden results so far.
It is not surprising in this front view that roses are my first passion. I have been growing them almost 45 years, since I was ten. But as I have learned about pollinators, biodiversity, the importance of including native plants and respecting the role that insects and fungi and soil microbes play in keeping us ALL alive, I realized my 20th Century modern rose ways HAD to change.

Since ditching both insecticides and fungicides, I have gradually replaced my most disease-prone roses with more "bulletproof" varieties, and it has been a blast learning just how healthy some of these are without any need for sprays. One big side benefit is that I can sneak in some fruits and veggies, because there are no poisons being sprayed.
BTW, that weedy looking rectangular patch in front, edging the drainage ditch, is a butterfly bed. In another few weeks it will look much more colorful.

MikeInBatonRouge 8 Apr 24
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6 comments

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2

I envy the sun you do get! Trees in the meadow on the south side of my house have grown to block most of the sun I did have, and a garden bed will be moved soon to chase what is left. I love the work you've done for your lovely cottage look, especially knowing how you've take the eco-values into account. Congrats!

Thanks!

2

That is a pretty house and garden.

Spinliesel Level 9 Apr 25, 2022

Thanks! The house is simple, but I like the layout. Built in 1968, so it is one year younger than I.
That yard, though, when I bought the place 4 years ago, was nothing but St. Augustine grass, a crape myrtle, and a foundation planting of boxwoods. All of it on dense clay soil I added the rail accent fence, all ten raised planting beds, around forty roses, six hydrangeas, camelia, American Beautyberry, button bush, Turk's cap, black mulberry, satsuma, Mayhaw, paw paws, loropetalums, three kinds of blackberries, native dewberries, blueberries, passionfruit, coral honeysuckle, monarda, gaillardia, rudbeckia, muscadine grapes, trailing powderpuff mimosas, native salvias both scarlet and violet, dahlias, shasta daisies, a few annual vegetables, and I am sure I am forgetting a few wildflowers.
Not surprizingly, a manicured lawn, poisoned into a monoculture turf, is not my priority or even secondary goal.

1

The ability to change & adapt is what makes us LIBTARDS superior. To adjust to circumstances that call for it as opposed to stagnation as conservatards do, is admirable. Plant natives for care free gardening so that you have time for the challenges of roses. Well done. I had 4 acres of lawn which are now 2 acres of restored prairie, and 2 in oak savannah. I do not intend to resell so there is no lawn. The" lawn" is a curse & only requires a high polluting mower, both air & sound, so it is the easy solution for the lazy, or conformists in the world. Uslesss & degrading of the environment.In Las Vegas astro turf is replacing the water sucking lawn. But the concept of green has to change in these areas. A gravel mulch is a better choice in my opinion. How does that astro turf smell at 120 degrees in the shade?

Mooolah Level 8 Apr 25, 2022
1

Looks great, you are so lucky not to have those horrible regulations that many in America do, which forbid anything but lawn in front gardens.

Fernapple Level 9 Apr 25, 2022

I will NEVER buy a home in an HOA-controlled neighborhood. Lawn "fascists." America has a number of insane obsessions, fundy Xtianity being but one. Lawns, massive personal trucks, and football are a few others. The lawn thing really aggravates me. Some HOAs have literally required member to use toxic chemicals to "keep up" their golf course--er--I mean lawns. It is insane. "We're NUMBER ONE!.....at destroying the environment.🙄

5

It's looking great, My passion vines have been really slow this year, so best of luck, but once they start,Katy bar the door.

glennlab Level 10 Apr 24, 2022

Mine already look like they want to smother the Rambling rose, but Peggy will hold her own. Can't begin to count all the passion vine flower buds I am seeing. It is going to be a display. Thanks again for those cuttings you sent. I combined them with the ones I found locally, so they have some cross-pollination going on.

@MikeInBatonRouge They will open overnight in mass, I went out and had none, then a few hours later, 10 were open.

6

That pinkmound off on the left of the photo is one of my experiments. What used to be a Thirty ft tall aging crape myrtle that barely bloomed served mostly to block a hefty chunk of the precious morning sun from my front yard. Given my priorities, it had to go. (Don't hate me, lol). Rather than try to dig it out, I topped it, leaving an eight ft vase-shapped four part trunk to serve as scaffolding. Of course crape myrtle grows back like a chia pet on steroids, so I pull up sprouts throughout the growing season and give the top an annual haircut in January. I know I crape- murdered it, but my intent was never to keep it as a crape myrtle. Instead, it has become the scaffolding for a Peggy Martin rambler rose and two types of passion fruit vines. They have engulfed it. Peggy M is approaching her massive spring bloom, in which that whole mound will look like a rose tree. As soon as she finishes, 5-6 weeks from now, the passion flowers will be in full bloom, and I will get fruit from summer onward.
In this latest shot, those are native Southern muscadine grapes in the foreground.

let me know which color of fruit you get from the purple ones, the light blue are yellow when ripe with red seeds

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