Jungly Garden

Before I show you my jungly garden, let’s take a look at some pretty things I grew so that I don’t leave you with a bad impression of me or my garden. I often say that I am embarrassed by how my garden looks with its lack of structure and organization, it’s just a wild mess with overgrown trees, plants, and weeds.

It’s hard to maintain a large garden while working full-time. Here in the U.S., working full time is 40 hours a week from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. On top of that, I often find myself buying/growing way too much! Also, I have many hobbies inside the house, so I am stretched pretty thin most of the time. I don’t really have time to maintain the garden as much as I would like.

Enough about me whining, let’s look at some beautiful flowers this week. I have more but this will be like an appetizer for the feast coming in a few days.

The picture below is one of the paths that lead into the inner sanctuary of my garden. There used to be a beautiful trellis at the entrance but a strong gust of wind blew it down a few months ago. I have a few small seedling pots on floor near the entrance because it is shady in the afternoon to keep them cool.

To the right of the garden picture below is a great big Confederate Rose Hibiscus bush (I think) that I grew from seeds at least 3-4 years ago. In all these years it has given me about 6-7 flowers. When it bloomed, it bloomed during the day and when I come home, I don’t see it anymore. It keeps getting taller with more foliage but no flowers. I have a couple of these and I am likely to cut it down to 3 feet or remove it altogether. It takes too much space and have nothing to show.

To the left is my white rose bush that is a great prolific bloomer and is currently holding my jasmine vines up.

You can see that there are a lot of dead gladiolus, irises, and sunflowers in the picture below. I should really remove them. Weeds are growing in there much faster than I can pull them out. I am currently trying to fill the path with hibiscus and rose bushes but they are all small seedling size so it may take a few more years. My bearded irises are in many places in this picture. In the spring was the best time to see this area.

Front and center below is my “Red Baron” peach tree. It was OVERLOADED with fruit that it leaned over. I had nothing to prop it up except that wire tomato cage. I had to drape it with nets to keep dogs and dung beetles out of it. It was really a terrible thing to see. This fall I am going to trim it much better so that we won’t have this issue next year.

Here is the picture up close of the leaning peach tree. I had to freeze about 2 gallon size freezer bags of peaches that we cut up.

In this picture I have the tallest hollyhock plant ever reaching about 13 feet in the air. The yellowing brugmansia is behind it because I didn’t water it enough. To the right is the now dormant Lavatera trimestris ‘Pink Blush’. This section of the garden is the most crowded with gladioluses, lilies, a cherry tree, two rose bushes, a plumeria, and hibiscus bushes.

Below is filled with 4-6 hibiscus plants in seedling sizes, the peach tree on the right, the yellow is the euphorbia spurge but I can’t remember the exact kind right now.

A great part of the picture below is my “Strybing Beauty” bush that has tiny pink flowers. There are is an overgrown, blue, sage bush on the left.

My neighbor’s fence is behind these bushes of hibiscus, cherry, and another one of the tall, non-blooming Confederate Rose. It seemed to have grown overnight into 7-9 feet tall trees.

As you can see, the yard has some overgrown issues. It will take a whole lot of rain to be able to pull all those weeds and useless trees out of the way. I look forward to the fall season to clean up the garden.