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I’ve never thought about it before, but added up together my mom and my sister and brother-in-law and I grow well over two thousand annual flowers each year. We start most of them from seed, but we do supplement with bedding plants from the garden centers when something catches our fancy.
Of course that number doesn’t include all the perennial plants and roses and daylilies that we grow. And then there are all the flowering bulbs that adorn our yards at various times throughout the growing season.
I have no idea what the final tally is, but I can say it’s a tremendous amount of flower power.
2 comments
Beautiful postcard pictures? Such a variety of plants! What are the yellow and orange plants along front of border in the second? The yellow profusion zinnias in the first give great depth to your picture. About how many plants are in that group? Great camera work and such a variety of plants. Everything looks meticulous. James
Thanks for your kind comments as always, James! The top photo is from my backyard. That raised bed sits in front of our screen porch and it’s the only one I don’t plan out. I just stick the leftovers there when I’m done planting my other beds and the flowers for my mom’s yard. I usually don’t keep a count of the number of plants for that bed, but I did find some scribbles from a prior year that indicated I used about 50 annuals that particular year (the count also included a few pepper and tomato plants). There are also some annual plants that usually come up as volunteers in that bed like rudbeckias and verbena bonariensis.
The second photo is from my mom’s backyard. Meticulous is a good word for it, and I love that the picket fence makes it look so “cottage-gardeny.” That front border is made up of your run-of-the-mill French marigolds. My mom insists on having that marigold border every year because the flowers are so reliable and long-blooming, that no matter what her other plants do, she always has some guaranteed color. The rest of the bed is made up mostly of annuals I grow for her and a smattering of perennials like phlox, bee balm, butterfly weed and purple coneflowers. Every year it’s spectacular!
The third photo is from my sister’s and brother-in-law’s front yard flowerbed. They always have the healthiest plants of any of us. We think it’s because they use more manure and compost!
The final photo is of one of my daylily beds. That bed has been getting a lot more shade over the last decade, but those daylilies still dazzle. It will be interesting to see what happens this year because most of the trees that were shading that bed were either trimmed back or removed last fall. Maybe I’ll be able to mix things up by adding some sun-loving perennials.
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