Garden Madness, Part I

I spent last Sunday with a good friend, visiting gardens that were featured on the Missouri Botanical Gardens’ St. Louis Garden Tour 2011. There were eight homes on the tour, and I think we made it to six. We skipped the bus/lunch tour, and drove ourselves. St. Louis is so easy to get around–if you don’t mind driving. I mind driving much less than I do climbing on and off buses with people telling me where I can go, and when.

We saw so very much that it would be true madness to try to describe everything. I got some good ideas for my own garden, and discovered some new plants. I now know what purslane looks like, and that a Ming Aralia is a house plant, and not a kind of dwarf Japanese Maple.

I also learned that some gardeners don’t know when to stop. Annuals are lovely, but can be visual weapons when used by intemperate gardeners. And how people find the time to fill all those little pots, and then water them, I’ll never know.

Let’s skip the verbiage and get on to the photos…

Beyond this door lay a mad effusion of life. Of greenery and blooms. Made me a little dizzy, but it was quite lush.

This was a stunning contrast to the first garden…The docent mentioned that the tiny boxwoods are snipped weekly.

The theme of this garden was Southern Charm. One of the most amazing facts about it was that the home was only eleven years old, but had been designed/decorated to seem much older. I would’ve made some different choices, but it was gracious, overall.

Loved this:

Herbs:

Sweet:

Now, this place kind of freaked me out. It was so enormous and well-planned, that I guessed that it was a business right off–but it was also obviously a labor of love. The Yoga Garden was so huge–covering an acre or more–that there was no way I could give you a sense of the whole area with a single camera shot. Here are some details: