Topiary Basics : The Art of Shaping Plants in Gardens & Containers

How to Grow A Chair : The Art of Tree Trunk Topiary

Gardens of Obsession : Eccentric and Extravagant Visions

Stained Glass For Beginners

Mosaics : Inspiration and Original Projects for Interiors and Exteriors

Debbie Travis' Painted House: Paint Finishes for Furniture Made Easy Debbie Travis' Painted House: Decorating with Paint Made Easy

The Mosaic Book : Ideas, Projects and Techniques

Stenciling on a Grand Scale : Using Simple Stencils to Create Visual Magic

Debbie Travis' Painted House: Stenciling Made Easy Pad: The Guide to Ultra-Living (My favorite decorating book)

The Art of Faux : The Complete Sourcebook of Decorative Painted Finishes

How to Make Rustic Garden Furniture

June 11th The Tulips, planted in September, arise and bloom.

K-Mart sells us fake Victorian lawn furniture at low cost.

We buy small trees at Fred Meyer

Bluebells from last year (on left) blossom hugely, while recent transplants (to the right) struggle in their first year.

Snow in Summer, put in as seeds last year, survived through the winter, and are healthier this year.

Alaskan Forget-me-nots also do well over winter.

Various bushes are put in from the Plant Kingdom Nursery, and transplanted from Garden Boy's gravel pit.  In the rear are happy lilacs from K-Mart put in last year.

Last year's "Victorian" planter made from the dumpster lamp shade, is filled with nursery flowers.

Other small native bushes from the gravel pit.

Rhubarb plants we separated and transplanted from the front yard 2 weeks ago.

New purchase of a Plum tree from Plant Kingdom.

A May Day Tree from Plant Kingdom is also in bloom a couple of weeks after being put in.

More tulips arise next to the Roman Column/sprinkler stand which stands as a memorial to Lilith (our mouse, now deceased).

The wild variety of tulips were grabbed late last season at Fred Meyer, and planted just before the snow fell.  We then covered them in straw for the winter.

At the back is a wire support fence where Garden Boy has trained up Raspberries he transplanted from his Rural North Pole home last year.

Mme Exxxedrin recklessly planted a few fistfuls of  sunflower seeds (bought as bird food) along the long walk and elsewhere this May.  Already they are taking over, and will likely do frightening things.

We buy labels so that we will later be able to identify the little trees and bushes we put in.  Surrounding this label are dozens of baby sunflowers.

The pots are filled with annuals from all the local hothouses.  Behind stands a new honeysuckle bush from Plant Kingdom.  What we learned last year was that potted plants, transplants, bulbs and seeds that were planted early in the summer made it through the winter even if they were not in good shape when they went in, however, bushes and perennials put in late (with the exception of the Tulips) died over the winter even if they were healthy last August.  So we are racing to put in the maximum number of shrubs by the end of June.

   The Garden on June 11th

The Garden on June 17th: 

The "Lawn" chairs have sprouted their seats.

Auntie Addeville and Garden Boy have put up the frame for the Ramadan Tent.

Alaska's state flower, the Forget-me-not does very well here. 

  So do our more exotic tulips.

Some sort of dainty groundcover that keeps popping up.

The new Red Honeysuckle bushes are blooming already.

The climbing vines are beginning to creep up the cat enclosure.

Mme. Exxxedrin presents garden tulips to the Princess Shoelace.  

Flowers and garden arches, June 20 

 
New Garden arches and lawn furniture attempt in vain to distract from the neighbor's truck and trailer. Plantings will be trained up the arches in the coming years.

Certain plants can winter over in Alaska and so bloom fairly early:

  Forget-me-nots (the state flower) Snow-in-summer  Daisies  (especially Shasta types) Rhubarb 

We also had great success with the tulips we put in:

Anything in a planter, or pot will die over winter, so pots are filled with annuals from nurseries at the beginning of summer (May).  Many plants that are perennials in the lower 48 are annuals here, like begonias, fuchsias, and some dainty daises.    

 Here we have prefabricated fake topiary from Sam's Club (39.99 each!) into which we have thrust  moss, dirt, and Wave petunias so that they appear to be entirely real instead of 2/3 fake leaves.  The pre-built topiary is less expensive than buying , or even making, the frames and planting and potting them yourself, plus the fake leaves blend with the real ones so there are no bald spots while the real vegetation is growing. 8/18/00

The Garden in Early September, Prepared for the annual Mad Hatter's Tea Party (Greetings to new theatre students) 2000.  This Year we have added a Ramadan tent made of Egyptian Tent fabric brought to the US by Timarie, the former guest artist scene designer who moved to Egypt.