What is frostweed OG?
Funny how these overlooked areas sometimes just turn out great.
MY home garden is too small to contain much in the way of surprises but at my allotment, the very first section I planted was at the entrance next to the shed - my gravel garden (or, depending on mood, my scree bed).
This has been a joy for the past decade but this year, having finally attacked 2 gigantic acanthus plants and a deadly New Zealand flax, it has morphed into exactly what I had hoped for - a light, airy and graceful space with tall see thru' perennials such as althea cannabina, gaura lindheimii, indigofera heterantha, verbena bonariensis and the spectacular oat grass, stipa gigantea. There are many clumps of dianthus, verbascums, baptisia, smaller fescues and various umbellifers, alongside R.primula, R,cantabridgiensis and R.marbled pink. It faces west so the evening sun glows through the gently waving stems and in spring, it is filled with tiny species tulips, auriculas, poppies and alliums and at each end, two brooms are backed with rockrose, euphorbias, rowans and a rampant R.Scharlachglut. Sounds busy and crammed but it has been solidly satisfying thoughout the entire season. It requires very little maintenance apart from fairly continual weeding amongst the gravel, no water and no fertilising.

I have 5 little separate gardens. My favorite is one I call my "sitting" area which is between the driveway and porch steps. It's not very big, and plants are quite condensed.

There are 23 roses, 4 large dahlias, a canna lilly, LOVE the sky blue of the cape plumbago which is getting huge, a few day lillies and irises, and then my favorites for added fragrance - star jasmine and japenese honeysuckle. It's chaotic and dense with lots of color and fragrance.

Roses in the area are Sunsprite, Heirloom, Bolero, Mary Rose, Paradise, Perfumed Tiger, Honey Dijon, Young Lycidas, Cherry Parfait (2), Color Magic, Crimson Glory, Ketchup and Mustard, Oklahoma, Ingrid Bergman, Purple Tiger, Arizona, Lunar Mist and an unnamed yellow floribunda that never stops blooming. New are Ebb Tide, Intrigue and Tiffany.

Probably the patio would be my favorite. The other beds have their moments but the patio gets the most sun so everything blooms the best there. It's all mostly in pots except for the little triangle on one corner. The pots make it easier for me to tend and water too so it's usually the least weedy, lol.

This is a difficult decision for me. My garden is so big. Different areas come into their prime at different times. Sometimes for me there is a moment, a perfect moment. The area outside my studio was spectacular in May. Now it's ho hum. I find that I have a great deal of satisfaction walking through the area where the rambler collection is blooming and growing in the spring. I guess over all the garden space that i call the Flora garden(because of a statue I've called Flora)is the favorite over all from spring through fall. There are so many well chosen reblooming roses there. Right now it is a pleasure. The view past the roses is also something to see. I'm also extremely fond of my shade garden. It is so sucessful, so beautiful. In the heat of summer walking into the cool shade is wonderful.

That would have to be a bed in the front, along the length of my porch, that I've just redone after several years of neglect. I left one rose in it, Mme Antoine Mari, and planted Cinco de Mayo and Smart 'n' Sassy in it (both are pretty small yet), as well as some hibiscus, brugmansia, some grasses, coleus, vincas, pentas, some herbs, one Tecoma stans, and a lot of filler plants. There are some large ferns in baskets as well (got both at a really good price!). I sit on my porch early in the morning before daybreak and drink coffee (iced because it's been so hot out), think about what I need to do that day, and meditate a while. When the sun comes up enough for me to see, I read or write in my journal. Yesterday I sat there early am and again after dark, enjoying a much needed light, steady rain.

What a pleasure to read your descriptions. I'm daunted by the many lovely-sounding companion plants (Suzy, you're the worst offender) that some of you are growing.

I have to agree with mendocino rose that my favorite areas change according to what is happening in them. However, my favorite spot to sit is on a bench outside the French door to the dining room which encompasses a view of several garden areas and, most dramatic, the backdrop of a very steep, boulder-strewn hillside with trees and large bushes breaking up the harshness. It's difficult to describe but, especially at the close of the evening, or on a moonlit night, it's indescribably beautiful. I think it's the closeness of this awesome natural creation in juxtaposition with the blooming beauty of the garden that makes it such a breath-taking experience. There are hills all around but they're further away, but this is actually a part of our property, a stunning piece of natural beauty, and it is uniquely special. My only regret is that it's almost impossible to capture on film in a way that does it justice.

Ingrid

What a great thread. Each part of the garden has its season and in that season I love it best. Winter is the season for the moss garden. When everything else is dull gray-brown the moss is glowing golden green, fresh and alive. The driveway garden in early Spring with hyacinths, wisteria, lilac, tulips, narcissus, hellebores and Brunnera with its forget-me-not blue flowers. And so it goes. The peculiar thing is that the most successful part of the garden is the simplest. It is a narrow strip along the South side of the house bound at the lot line with a 7' yew hedge with two Ilex meserve 'Dragon Lady' (to break the monotony)and the floor of the garden is Vinca minor. Beneath the hedge on the South are a few Buxus sufruticosa variegata (because they will not grow on the near side of the hedge). Beneath the hedge on my side is cream edged ivy, 'Goldchild', I think but bought unnamed, white edged solomon's seal, white bleeding heart, Helleborus niger and its various hybrids. Against the house is Magnolia grandiflora 'Edith Bogue' (almost certainly in the wrong place - I was going to espaliier it but haven't so far), Gardenia 'Chuck Hayes' (survived one winter so far), Chimonanthus praecox (too big for the spot but I prune drastically) and Jasminum nudiflorum. I tried a Fall blooming white Camellia, 'Elaine Lee' but I think she is gone. With this description it sounds like everything is wrong and yet when I step into this garden everything is fresh and green and seems right. My favorite? Probably not. It doesn't have enough plant interest, that is, events happening to be my favorite. In the end it's like my children. There cannot possibly be a favorite.

Cath

Camp, frostweed is a Texas native plant, here it is just starting to show white blooms, and is a source of nectar for the monarch butterflies on their migration to Mexico. It has single stems, and when it freezes the stems split and the sap freezes, making ice forms. Interesting plant!

is it some sort of asclepia or milkweed? I recall my sad attempts at texas bluebonnets (lupins)and, of course, the lovely clematis texensis (a bit on the miffy side). However, there is one Texas native which I heartily endorse and cannot think why everyone is not growing it - callirhoe bushii, a more upright version of the sprawling poppy mallow, callirhoe involucrata.
Um, sorry Ingrid - it is true, I get carried away and utterly fail to take my own advice (less is more). The garden, as a consequence, can, for a few fleeting moments, look perfectly harmonious. The remaining 95% of the time, it looks something of a mess. The gravel garden succeeds largely because of ancient landscape fabric, now somewhat deeply buried but still enough of a barrier to discourage me from my usual practice of stuffing in yet another plant.
I agree that this is a top thread - everyone gets quite lyrical, talking about their best bit of the garden.

There's a corner of my garden from which I can see almost all of my back-yard. I put a bench there some years ago, and so I sit beneath a Black Pine which was among the first plantings at the house more than fifty years ago; and yet, the pine is still rather small, because it was planted in an artistic-Oriental fashion, the trunk at an angle, and it looks wind-swept. I set on the bench beneath the pine tree, whose branches whisper in the breeze in their own way, the pungency of the pine's fragrance creating its own atmosphere. But, near at hand, is a patch of the ever-neat and tidy Geranium 'Biokovo' adding its own special pungency. Above this rises a purple-leafed Crinum--right now, with our lasting heat-wave and my perhaps too-ample watering, about to bloom. To my right are several clumps of a bamboo-like species of Dianella, the polished blue-purple fruits looking like tiny balls of deeply-colored porcelain; covering the ground below these are patches of Helleborus I grew from seed, the flowers of these a deep purple. I raise my eyes and turn to the left again, and am looking down my main rose border. Behind me, in shade most of the time, is 'Smoky', its licorice-raspberry scent adding to the atmosphere's resinous bouquet when in bloom. Close at left, 'William Lobb' gangles its ample lengths of spines, some of the canes reaching into the embraces of the pine tree, others scratching at the Crinum during windy times. Further are HPs, DPs, Floribundas, Bourbons; my rose 'Papa Vibert' rises above California Fuchsia; and in the distance, several Teas, with my cherished Hemisphaerica at the far end of the yard. Tree Dahlias rise between and through purple Ricinus, tossing casually in the breeze. To my right, past my clump of 'Roger Lambelin', beyond a Fuchsia denticulata which, since a tree-like Holly was removed and no longer shades it, is rather unhappy, I see the "working" part of my yard: My "plant hospital," my propagation racks, my potting bench. A bush 'Snowbird' which thinks it is a 'Climbing Snowbird', nearly closes off my entrance to the farther part of this area; but it is an old friend, among the first roses I ever planted, and I consider it not an obstacle but rather a sentry dedicated to protecting my "patients" on the propagation racks. On the top racks, exposed to the sun, is found my cactus collection; some of my cacti--indeed, seed-grown by me--will soon be half a century old, and so are old friends as well. Back in the more accessible part of the yard, my view passes over my collection of Hippeastrum--much in my thoughts today, as the first blossom of a Hipp. x Sprekelia cross I made years ago is opening even as I type these words! Then, beyond a dwarf lemon bush planted by my father, and around the jutting corner of the garage, I see a bit of my beloved Camellia 'Shikibu'. In the distance is another rose border--'Jacques Cartier', 'La France de '89', and 'Souvenir de la Malmaison' are prominent, and 'Mrs. B.R. Cant' will also be, in due course. And so my look at the middle distance to the right reaches its end. The back wall of the house lies between what I've described to the right and to the left, the display, mostly of bedding plants, changing with the seasons and whatever notions are current in my planning. Presiding over all of this, in the center of the yard, is a half-century-old Brazilian Pepper, with gnarly branches which I've trained over the years to look rather like those of a Live Oak. Sitting on my bench, seeing all of this together in a glance or two, I feel as if representatives from my whole horticultural life are at a great banquet table with me, proposing a toast that it's wonderful to be alive. That is the favorite part of my garden.

My favorite part of the existing gardens is right up by where people walk up, where I put my favorites very near if I could help it. It has a little bistro table like I love from Europe, and I copied the color scheme from a David Austin catalog :) (It's this one: http://www.davidaustinroses.com/english/Advanced.asp?PageId=1893 ).

That garden morphs into a peach-and-blue garden that's designed the same way as the first, so my apricot favorites are in the same general view.

Then you hit the wisteria arch and lawn with 3 Italian cypresses that are really junipers and much easier to grow here, lol. Past that is not my land; it's a pretty hillside field that has big fat hay rolls every so often, and then the tall woods that change colors so beautifully in fall. There's a white church steeple peeking out, too.

But that view means I have to sit outside and can't be in my pajamas, so it's not my favorite garden to relax in :D

The relaxation garden is coming along, with a big gazebo structure with Renae and Purezza, and a view of my teeny orchard in the distance. Up close are walls (a walled garden -- I had to have one!) and a gated arbor, with one side open visually to the back of the property, through the orchard to the tall woods beyond, where the deer play just outside of their woodsy cover. Our deer mainly stay in the woods, thank God!

There are also 5 hawks who hunt in the field past the orchard, so I could sit all day and watch that view -- in my pajamas if I like!

I can just spot my neighbors' rusty tin-roof barn to the side of my woods, but they are used to seeing me in my pajamas, and getting to watch any horses they have is worth that little break of privacy.