A Garden Tour at My Sister's

My sister, Pam, loves gardening and a few years ago completed the Master Gardener program in Indiana. She now lives in St. Louis and has been transforming the yard of her new home. It is gorgeeeous, simply gorgeous!



This little bed greets you as you drive up. It's at the front edge of the yard telling you there's more beauty to see.

Pam has been working inside and outside on making her new house an inviting, beautiful, refreshing home. She added a picture window to her family room looking out over the back yard and here's what you see.

Walk out onto the patio and this burst of color and texture grabs your attention.

As you stroll into the backyard, you're greated with all kinds of lovely plantings. The mulch she uses is this new stuff called "Black Gold". It's not oily, I swear! It's like a black peat moss or rich, dark soil. Only it's magical, because she says it stays in place and seems to control the weeds better than traditional bark mulch.

Look at this...those weepy, bushes that are really trees are just too cool!

Do you see that bush in the back with the fushcia flowers? That little number has caught the eye of my husband. He wants to plant them here in Kansas.

They are Crepe Myrtle (with my poor spelling I first typed Crape Myrtle...drop the first e...now there's a plant you want in your yard - ha). I've been asking around and what I've learned is they are a little tempermental here... a little too windy and a little too cold in the winter. They will grow here, but every few years they decide they are perennials instead of bushes and die back to the ground. We can live with that, 'cause you need to keep the guy who does all the heavy lifting very, very happy! If he wants some Crepe Myrtle, he's getting some!

Touring gardens is inspiring, with different plant varieties to investigate. How it's all put together, for me, is the most intriguing part. Pam has that gift. She is able to group plants in ways that make a whole garden bed interesting and beautiful. I love watching her gardens evolve and am currently plotting a way to extract her creative genes and inject them into me...we are sisters, so it should work!