Thats tropical....I can feel the warmth......it was 11 degrees here yesterday.....not good for early winter.

@floral_uk: Hi again. :) The bed is actually approx. 7 1/2' by 8 1/2'. I wondered if I was giving enough room for the plants. I did put the dimensions in a home planning program (attached), but I admit I only made the hydrangeas 42" squared even though they say they get up to 3' to 4'. I thought about some kind of tree that is evergreen, but I wasn't sure they'd get enough sun. The back of the garden gets a little less because of the roof line. And I didn't know if they would handle all the water the hydrangeas would need and do well. I even thought about those pencil junipers. I haven't tested my soil yet. I put the hydrangeas in the blueprint programs as blue, but I'd be just as happy with pink or mixed. I agree about colors that compliment each other. I'd like to stay with the cottage-like pink, blue, snowy white, true red, pinkish red (not hot pink), yellow and green. You answered my question about the Zephirine Drouhin roses in the vines forum. And I do think I'm going to try to put one in the porch brick planter to see if it will grow around that column. You can't see the planter. It's behind the column. I also toyed with the idea of putting ZD in the back of the large garden this thread about to see if it would climb the black wrought iron railing. ?? You can't see the railing very well in the actual photo. Here is a link that might be useful: GardenWeb images This post was edited by BelleIsleCottage on Sat, Apr 26, 14 at 20:07

Thanks for the nice comments! The garden is my main hobby - and my passion :-) One of the reasons we bought this property was the existing ash, white pines, and young red oak that made a perfect setting for a garden. The rest was pretty much a blank slate, so it's come a long way in the past 14 years - and there's still more that needs doing... - thank goodness! (I'd be terribly bored if there were no changes required!) pm2- the clematis on the end of the garage is supposed to be Nike (I have a lot of clematises that appear to be not what the label said it was supposed to be!) The color is a bit odd this year - it's usually has a redder undertone - this is what it looked like last year: Perhaps the cooler temperatures this year affected the color....? As for the size and bushiness - I never bother cutting my group 3 clematies back hard. I just trim off any obviously winter-killed bits and trim them as necessary to neaten them up a bit. That seems to work for me to get vigorous bloom from them top to bottom! They get a small dose of clematis fertilizer in late May or early June. I suspect it'll be another two years at least before the clematises on the fence side of the swag will make it up to the chains. I had to replace a few that didn't make it through their first year in the ground (planted in late summer 2010). Thanks for the 'Golden Shadows' suggestion. That looks like a possibility. I actually have a Wolf Eyes dogwood a few feet to the left where it gets a bit more light and moisture through a break in the tree canopy: I'll have to think about whether the two different variegations would go together or not. Maybe the golden one could be shifted far enough to the right to give some visual separation while still screening the shed. thyme - my pruning technique for the heptacodium (and most things in the garden) is 'if a branch is in my way when I walk past, lop it off!' :-) Actually the heptacodium tree is an odd shape when viewed from the side. It is planted close to the old cedar clump so the heptacodium had no room to develop branches on the side closest to the cedar. If you look at it in the picture of the front garden from the road you can see that it sort of looks like half a tree! But if you look at it beside the bench in the picture through the iron abour, it looks perfectly normal! That is the way we most often see it so we don't particularly care about the odd look of it from the side.... I doubt that the heptacodium would snap unless perhaps it was in a very exposed place, so if yours has some shelter from wind, I wouldn't hesitate to prune it up a bit. The clematis swag started as a rose swag in an effort to try to control the New Dawn roses that used to grow on the south gate arbour. I loved the rose swags we saw in England and wanted to try one. It was very pretty; but we got tired of those wicked thorns! The Clematis montana on the arbour had started to climb on the swag so that gave us the idea of using clematis as a 'kinder and gentler' alternative to roses for the swag. So far it seems to be working out reasonably well. Copper pipes are handy to work with! Yes, the fence and gate is pipes threaded through a wooden frame. The gate just after we completed it in the garage: If I was doing it again, I'd have painted the wood the Bonsai green of the dark trim on the shed instead of the sage green we used. It is too much of a PITA to repaint it now! I don't treat the pipes at all - they rapidly turn brown so blend in to the plants and disappear. It'll be many years before the copper turns to verdigris green. It would be easy to make a trellis with copper pipes. The big clematis at the back of the garage is on a tripod I made with copper pipes threaded through wooden stretcher bars. The link below will take you to a thread in the clematis forum where I describe how it was built.... The iron arbour and tuteurs are also things I designed and had a local iron craftsman make for me: I like making things - but welding iron is beyond me! :-) Mario said 'if you can draw it, I can build it' - he was fun to work with but is retired now. Thanks mxk3 - green and serene is my major goal - for the backyard in particular. anitamo - the panel idea is a good one - I've given some thought to the possibility of doing something that would create a trompe-l'oeil arbour/gate implying the garden continues into the distance... I think it would take perhaps more work than I want to do at this point so I'll probably go with a tree/shrub if I can. But I still have a yen to do something trompe-l'oeil somewhere....! This post was edited by woodyoak on Sun, Jul 7, 13 at 12:06

Hmmmm....I had answered this before I took my nap. Obviously I only previewed and didn't submit. Let me try again. Those lilies in the last shot are fabulous. As I had said much earlier, I really love your clump of Black Eyed Stella. And Stella's Little sister is very pretty...like the two tones effect. Your roses and catmint and all the blooms make it appear as if your house is on a high hill. Very pretty and obviosly no drought on Long Island. kay