Garden Tour

Since I had put some pictures of parts of the daylily fields up the last 2 days, I thought I might continue with an informal tour of the gardens. This is a section we have always called the Japanese Garden because it contains a large part of our collection of Japanese Maples. Funny, though, none are shown in this picture, but rather an assortment of conifer and magnolias. This pictures was taken at least 8 years ago so if you were walking with me this morning, you probably wouldn't recognize it. The white magnolia is too tall to smell the flowers up close any more and all of the conifer have grown so tall that they no longer make a wall which separates this garden from the front yard, but rather, you look through some of them now, more like a sheer curtain than heavy drapes. There are also a number of small ponds interspersed and lots of shade plants - hostas, gingers, ferns, woods orchids and wildflowers. It goes up the hill to the right into a mixed conifer mini-forest where the trees are quite large and it is always cool even on the hottest of summer days.