Beautiful! I really enjoyed the tour of your gardens and love the sunflowers, peppers, the Cherry brandy, the grape vines. Your front entry is lovely. Glad your pumpkins are intact!

Wow! Thanks so much for the guided tour, Bonnie! My mouth started watering when you got to those gorgeous peppers. Do you also grow tomatoes & make your own salsa?

I love the mixture of grasses & what looks like 'Cherry Brandy' rudbeckia in your shot of rounding the corner of the porch. The Echinacea I've got growing at the SE corner of my house just is not happy there so I'm hoping to put rudbeckia in it's place for contrast with the mature ornamental fountain grass, sea holly and Harry Lauter Walkingstick tree growing in that bed.

Maybe my 2nd year of WS I'll be able to share a similar guided tour. There's plenty of work needs to get done before then however.

Beautiful and so satisfying to know you did it all yourself. Congratulations on a job well done!

Eileen

Lovely and nice warm/hot colours! I see the Geum foliage is holding. Don't you just love it?!?!

WOW!!! Very Beautiful!!! :D

I love your pergola!

Lovely! That vegetable garden gets bigger and more lush-looking each year.

PV

Great photos. Great plants. The second "Cherry Brandy" photo almost looks like a painting. Thanks for sharing your gardens with us.

Don

Very nice and so pretty

Thanks everyone!

Eileen, I do grow tomatoes and can my own salsa, but unfortunately, those huge, healthy tomato plants in the pictures, are just now starting to set fruit. Usually, I have ripe ones by now. I'm getting a little worried that I won't have a ripe tomato before the first frost this year!

Tiffy, the Geum is 'Fireball' and it holds up very well, in spite of heavy grasshopper feeding. The 'Mango Lassi' seems to die back more, and is not quite as hardy. I've been trying for three years to get 'Blazing Sunset' going, and the germination is good, but either it dies when I plant it out, or it doesn't come back after the winter.

Bonnie

Now that is weird! We must have different grasshoppers because mine won't touch the Geums but love to decimate the Monardas. :O) I have an orange Geum given by my SIL which is still blooming and some really healthy and big seedlings which are suppose to be red and were winter sown this past year - seeds sent from a US friend. :O)

Beautiful! Your sunflowers are magnificent. I tried those one time and they looked so bad I ended up yanking them up! LOL Your gardens are so well manicured and neat. Thanks for the tour!

Yum.........Gorgeous garden.
I also love your backdrop......splendid!

What part of CO are you? I am driving through CO to go to NV in November. Might pass by that area too.
We did that a couple years ago on our way to Utah and spent a couple days around Grand Junction and had a great time.
I love the splendor of CO.
That drive on US 550 from Durango to Ouray is the scariest I have ever been through, though.

Lovely, Bonnie!! You have quite a green thumb and design eye :^)

I love the Autumn Beauty sunflower and the Cherry Brandy flower. Great colors!

I have a package of Calif. poppies I didn't get planted yet, so think I'll wait till next spring. Can't wait - I love them!

Pitimpinai, I am a little over an hour east of Grand Junction. Would love for you to stop by, though by November we will have already had a killing frost, so there wouldn't be a lot to see by that point. Email me if you think you might stop by.

Thanks for the kind words, Mstywoods! When you don't have a lot of space, you have to get creative. There are a couple of beds that I don't post pictures of, because I can't seem to get it right in those areas, or there are emtpy spots where things just don't grow well, etc. That's the nice thing about posting photographs, I can show people only the things I want them to see, LOL. Besides, if I just posted pictures of all of the plants the grasshoppers have eaten, it would be too depressing!

Very nice garden Bonnie! ;)

Are those the castor bean seeds I gave to you?

Thanks, v1rtuos1ty! Yep, I believe those were your castor bean seeds : ) Yours look better than mine though. Something's eating at mine, even though they are supposed to be poisonous. Probably grasshoppers. They eat my rhubarb leaves too, and those are poisonous as well.

Bonnie - my tomato plants set fruit weeks ago and the grape tomatoes are ripening faster day-by-day. There are multiple clusters on the Stupice plants altho' no ripe ones yet. This is my first year growing tomatoes via WS and I'm impressed with the plants. I'll have to let you know what I think of the tomatoes after I get a taste. The Stupice were recommended for their flavor. If my plants hadn't set fruit until now I'd be worried too!

Most everything else is way earlier this year than normal. My tall phlox has been blooming for several weeks and those usually don't bloom until August. My garden diary says they bloomed August 20 last year.

You gotta love gardening, if for no other reason than the surprises!

I keep going back to look at your "tour" - it is fantastic, thanks!

Carrie

Hmmm, I looked at your Rudbeckia 'Cherry Brandy' and my eyes are beginning to like it. I really like it! :D hehehe. The longer I stare, the more she seduces me. HAHAHA. What is the final height of it? Can we exchange seeds?

Bonnie,
Great looking garden. Of course really love the pictures of the veggies. I've read your posts about your problems this year. I've had my share also. Found the first root nematodes I've ever had. Must of came in on a transplant I bought or some compost I bought. I just never buy transplants and decided to buy a few bigger ones after I had a spraying accident on some of mine. But overall here things are so much better than the last 2 seasons I'm very thankful. Have some huge tomato plants that haven't set many if any. And others are loaded. Many times the same variety, out of the same flats, the same size when transplanted. As I tell those who ask me for advice. The more I garden the less I think I know. Next time I'm in your area going to have to stop by and take a tour. Jay

V1rtu0s1ty, the Rudbeckia is about 24" tall. I doubt it will come true from seed, but I plan on saving seeds anyway. Remind me in the fall, and I'll send you some : )

Jay, I'm trying to console myself about the lack of tomatoes, by calling this the year of the peppers. I've got 35 plants, and almost every one has at least a few peppers on it, and some are loaded. Planned to use most for salsa, and paprika, but I may have to find some other uses for them. Would love for you to stop by if you are ever out this way.

Bonnie

Ok, do you need more castor beans?

Hmmm ... that depends on if I am able to harvest any seeds from the ones I'm growing this year : )

Ok, just let me know. :D

I also have tithonias, let me know if you like! :D