Happiest surprises were: strawberry fields gomphrena, love in a mist (bloomed forever and even the seed heads were nice to look at!), candy tuft (lilac, white and purple), venice mallow ~nice flower, peony poppy-pretty though short lived.

Beyond expectations: love in a mist (it was really lovely)
red peony tree - huge blooms

Back from the Brink: golden giant amaranthus - it was so tiny I thought it would not survive....but it grew! I wouldn't have called it a giant this year but it had a lovely colour and I was very pleased with it!

New to Garden: yellow chrysanthemum(from London spring plant exchange)- cheery bright yellow blooming it's head off now! Such a happy plant!

Thrived in a tough spot: lavatera (purple striped and a pink) - planted down by the pond where wild things grow and they both performed well....very eye catching with little to no care!

Happiest surprises were: strawberry fields gomphrena, love in a mist (bloomed forever and even the seed heads were nice to look at!), candy tuft (lilac, white and purple), venice mallow ~nice flower, peony poppy-pretty though short lived.

Beyond expectations: love in a mist (it was really lovely)
red peony tree - huge blooms

Back from the Brink: golden giant amaranthus - it was so tiny I thought it would not survive....but it grew! I wouldn't have called it a giant this year but it had a lovely colour and I was very pleased with it!

New to Garden: yellow chrysanthemum(from London spring plant exchange)- cheery bright yellow blooming it's head off now! Such a happy plant!

Thrived in a tough spot: lavatera (purple striped and a pink) - planted down by the pond where wild things grow and they both performed well....very eye catching with little to no care!

Sorry about the double post...I think my computer is acting up again....

Happiest surprises were: strawberry fields gomphrena, love in a mist (bloomed forever and even the seed heads were nice to look at!), candy tuft (lilac, white and purple), venice mallow ~nice flower, peony poppy-pretty though short lived.

Beyond expectations: love in a mist (it was really lovely)
red peony tree - huge blooms

Back from the Brink: golden giant amaranthus - it was so tiny I thought it would not survive....but it grew! I wouldn't have called it a giant this year but it had a lovely colour and I was very pleased with it!

New to Garden: yellow chrysanthemum(from London spring plant exchange)- cheery bright yellow blooming it's head off now! Such a happy plant!

Thrived in a tough spot: lavatera (purple striped and a pink) - planted down by the pond where wild things grow and they both performed well....very eye catching with little to no care!

Happiest surprises were: strawberry fields gomphrena, love in a mist (bloomed forever and even the seed heads were nice to look at!), candy tuft (lilac, white and purple), venice mallow ~nice flower, peony poppy-pretty though short lived.

Beyond expectations: love in a mist (it was really lovely)
red peony tree - huge blooms

Back from the Brink: golden giant amaranthus - it was so tiny I thought it would not survive....but it grew! I wouldn't have called it a giant this year but it had a lovely colour and I was very pleased with it!

New to Garden: yellow chrysanthemum(from London spring plant exchange)- cheery bright yellow blooming it's head off now! Such a happy plant!

Thrived in a tough spot: lavatera (purple striped and a pink) - planted down by the pond where wild things grow and they both performed well....very eye catching with little to no care!

Sorry about the double post...I think my computer is acting up again....

Happiest surprises were: strawberry fields gomphrena, love in a mist (bloomed forever and even the seed heads were nice to look at!), candy tuft (lilac, white and purple), venice mallow ~nice flower, peony poppy-pretty though short lived.

Beyond expectations: love in a mist (it was really lovely)
red peony tree - huge blooms

Back from the Brink: golden giant amaranthus - it was so tiny I thought it would not survive....but it grew! I wouldn't have called it a giant this year but it had a lovely colour and I was very pleased with it!

New to Garden: yellow chrysanthemum(from London spring plant exchange)- cheery bright yellow blooming it's head off now! Such a happy plant!

Thrived in a tough spot: lavatera (purple striped and a pink) - planted down by the pond where wild things grow and they both performed well....very eye catching with little to no care!

Happiest surprises were: strawberry fields gomphrena, love in a mist (bloomed forever and even the seed heads were nice to look at!), candy tuft (lilac, white and purple), venice mallow ~nice flower, peony poppy-pretty though short lived.

Beyond expectations: love in a mist (it was really lovely)
red peony tree - huge blooms

Back from the Brink: golden giant amaranthus - it was so tiny I thought it would not survive....but it grew! I wouldn't have called it a giant this year but it had a lovely colour and I was very pleased with it!

New to Garden: yellow chrysanthemum(from London spring plant exchange)- cheery bright yellow blooming it's head off now! Such a happy plant!

Thrived in a tough spot: lavatera (purple striped and a pink) - planted down by the pond where wild things grow and they both performed well....very eye catching with little to no care!

Sorry about the double post...I think my computer is acting up again....

Pleasant surprise was that my Ivory Silk Lilac did amazingly well in its second year.

My white tree peony had a flower that was almost as big as the plant itself. Now that was a BIG surprise.

I thought that I had lost 3 of my brugmansia plants, but decided to put two of them in a pot at the back of the patio near a brick wall. They came back and bloomed. The other brug, I put into a garden at the front of the house under the gas meter. Other plants grew up around it, and I forgot about it until recently when it put forth its head with a MASSIVE stem and HUGE fuzzy leaves. It was just starting to bud up when Mr Frost came and I had to dig her up and bring her in. Maybe she'll bloom for me in the winter.

I had a good dahlia show this year also, but not as good as last year. Now I have to dig them up. Back breaking work ahead for me.

This was my second year, in the new garden beds I created, at the house I purchased two years ago
I planted upon the move in many old plants from my previous gardens. Old reliables, Hostas, daylilies,iris, sedums etc.
They are now looking good and have been the bones of the new garden beds.

I have loved my Dahlias this year as well, but I have been a bit lazier than jroot, as I put them into the garden in their pots I stored them in overwinter. I had flowers for the table for them for a large part of the summer, and flowers for bouquets to give away, a plenty

I as well love the Brugmansia, but had only two or three actually, that did open their bloom before the frost cut them down. That was the saddest thing for me in the garden.

Just wait every year for the perfume of the flowers and the spectacular show that Brugmansia put on

I loved it that some of my Fushia survived overwinter. I had thrown about a foot of leaves on over all the beds last fall.
Just hoping to build up the soil in these new beds.
Lots of things came through winter with that deep leave cover.
Roses just loved it, as did the Toad Lilies and Poppies.
Just get talking about my garden and I can't help feeling happy about most all of it

Thanks for the topic
All to soon it seems, we are putting the garden to bed, for another year

Coreopsis 'Full Moon' -- from a small plug potted up this spring, and planted in June, the resulting plant has been huge and smothered with beautiful yellow flowers. Hopefully it overwinters! ;)

Allium thunbergii 'Ozawa' -- finally a decent size, and what a beauty this time of year!

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hope we have more replys

Nice topic

Coolplantsguy, that combo is a knockout! Better than the "captivating combinations" feature in Fine Gardening.

If you've collected seeds from the Allium thunbergii 'Ozawa', please let me know and I'll surely find something you'll want to trade for them...

- Bev

Okay, here's my list:

best combo: Stiff Goldenrod underplanted with Aster frickartii "Monch"
beyond expectations: Lysymachia "Beaujolais" gee I hope these overwinter...
back from the brink: Cornus "mid-winter fire" first year plant, roots were devastated by grubs, as were many things this summer. Moved it to some choice garden real estate and it seems to have recovered. Also Vitex agnus-castus (Chaste Tree) got knocked right down to nothing last winter. It returned from the roots and surpassed its last-year height of six feet. Wow.
new to garden Cosmos "Purity" these bloomed early and got tall but didn't flop. I barely got any seed 'cause it just wouldn't stop blooming. I couldn't believe it.
nicest surprises Escholzia "Carmine King" with a rich two-toned pink and salmon-rose colour. Also, Helianthemum "Wisely Pink", which was also a warm salmon-pink that looked gorgeous with the "Flame" peonies.

bev

I spent some time looking at your garden photos and family happenings

You sure are making good use of that site

Is this different than having a blog
Looks as though you found a good spot to put down roots. What is the soil like I imagine a sandy loam.
I have some nice plants, lots of them and keep the tags but mostly never remember the names.
Will look up some of the plants you mention.
Of course here in Barrie, is a little cooler than Vienna

We almost bought a farm there some years ago.

Flickr is a photo gallery, different than a blog. You can add comments to each photo and organize them into sets and collections. I use it as a photo journal of the garden as it evolves over the years.

This area has a lot of virtues but there's not much of a community here. I hope more people, especially environmentally aware people-- will move here. The soil is good (ours is a sandy-silty loam) and real estate is really inexpensive.

- Bev

My biggest surprise: My Budddleia I winter sowed last year made it through winter, grew into a large shrub (about 7 feet high) and gave me beautiful, fragrant, blooms until frost.

A delightful mistake: wintersowed some Sweet Peas last year which I though were annuals, but I got no flowers. This summer they became extremely strong vines and produced the most beautiful, porcelin-like flowers in pale shades of blue, pink, and white - right up to frost. Produced nice seed heads for seed collecting.

Fell in love with the lowly Petunia. I scavenged some seeds from a dying bed at Upper Canada Village last Labour Day weekend. Since there were no flowers I did not know what to expect but they produced very vigorous plants and flowers in shades of lilac, blue, veined red, veined purple. I had never really looked at petunias closely, but these were on my deck rail and were really stunning. Of course I have collected seed from them.

A first for Datura 'Belle Blanche'. The flowers were so perfect, pure white, and fragrant.

Disappointment: My sole surviving brugmansia (of three) finally produced lots of blooms, only to have them zapped by frost. I knew the frost was coming and brought the buds in to see if I could coax them into opening, but no luck. Back into the basement until next year.

We were given some supposed Canna tubers last fall, which were stored in peat moss in our shed. Planted them in a large container in the spring and when they finally decided to break ground it turned out what we had weren't Canna, but Calla lilies, Zantedeschia. And the look to be Z. ethiopeca which means I won't bother digging them up.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a first year Echinecea 'Double Decker' actually flower this year, AND show signs of why it got its name.

On top of that, I was also very pleased with finally being able to divide a Hosta 'Fortunei Hyacinthina' sport I'd been growing on for 4 years. It yielded 13 divisions, some with multiple shoots and one in particular hold great promise, to such an extent as a matter of fact that I've already given it a 'working' name: H. 'Twisting The Night Away', shown here in mid September.

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This year we decided that rather than use the usual annual suspects in our hanging baskets that we'd go with perennials. While they weren't necessarily all a smash, the results have us wanting to experiment more with them next year. This basket was one of our favourites.

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Pieter

I was surprised and pleased the most by the squash. Its the first time I have gotten much from squash. I hand pollinated them this year and got a lot from four different kinds. I am going to grow a LOT of squash next year!

My brugs were a disappointment too. I had two buds on one when the frost came.

The feverfew was beautiful, as were my poppies. The intense purple amaranth looked good but didn't give me any seed before the frost took it.

Lots of great stuff and some disappointments. So it always goes with a garden.

I had a very nice surprise this week. While walking on garbage day I came across 2 one gallon pots of Nikko Blue Hydrangea which were very much alive if you looked closely but placed out along with all the other garbage. It was a good walk that day :~)

I had purchased a number of daylilies at reduced prices last fall, because tags were lost, etc., and they bloomed beautifully this summer. I will donate most of them to our local hort. sale, since many appear to be the same cultivar, likely 'Moonlit Masquerade'. A couple of others seem to be 'Always Afternoon'.

Most of my perennials bloomed exceptionally well this summer, with all the rain, but the gaillardia and tomatoes didn't fair so well. The daylilies and phlox paniculata were especially "happy" and looked it, with lots of bloom. I keep reminding myself not to plan my garden around plants that performed well in 2009, because it was NOT an average one for my area, in terms of rainfall. I need to make sure that I include lots of plants that are drought tolerant. It's so easy to forget the effects of a dry summer on most plants. If they're not drought resistant, they can look really pathetic.

Well it's not quite the same kind of surprise... but I was rummaging through a used books store yesterday when I came upon a 1937 booklet on Canadian dye-yielding plants and recipes...

Ianna
sounds like some good reading there.

I paurchased this week some great finds.
Well we will see and they where 60 percent off

Love those deals Bought three of the Midnight Rose coral bells, I had purchased one earlier for 25.00 so sixty percent off was terrific.
It is very pretty.

Bought Blue Muffin Viurnum but when I got home and read more on line seemed one should buy more than one for pollination, so I went back to the Bradford Garden Centre, which was my undoing.

Bought a second plant and then five others
Including Tamarix Pink Cascade, Cutleaf Sumac Vinaigrier and Service berry Autumn Brilliance.

Off the topic of nicest surprises and onto nice surprises hopefully for next year.

I love bargains. Don't we all.
Bradford has lots of good stuff yet available.

Actually something to experiment with. My other hobby is textiles and quilting. I would be curious to see what colours I get when I mix in some of these materials. Also I like to collect primitive cloths like I have a suzani cloth and IKAT. Amazingly the colours which are vegetable dyes remain so vibrant.