Glad I took these before the October storm. It doesn't look quite as nice as this anymore.

Crabapple Corner in May (still under construction in October)
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West behind garage--WS globeflower, bachelor buttons, cushion spurge, rudbeckia, gaura, dianthus, columbine, toad lily, rose campion, cardinal flower, Echinacea, stokesia, perennial snapdragon, English daisy, penstemon, agastache + lots more
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Butterfly bed in May. Extended this bed another 2 ft. on the right in October to hold WS butterfly perennials.
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Butterfly bed & La Musardiere in October--WS blackberry lily, Shasta daisy, gaillardia, penstemon, rudbeckia, globeflower, delphinium...well, the list just goes on and on
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Burgess Oval in May
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Burgess Oval in October with WS gaura, verbascum, gaillardia, balloon flower, butterfly bush, Maltese cross, rudbeckia, blackberry lily, Cupid's dart
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North shade bed in May
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North shade bed in October--WS sweet William, penstemon, columbine, butterfly bush, balloon flower, turtlehead, persicaria virginiana, coreopsis, Shasta daisy, dianthus, stokesia, ladybells, English daisy. That piece of deadwood gave me a few btu's of heat during our 10-days without power.
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I'm kicking myself for not taking "before" pictures but other than the Burgess Oval, the beds & walkways in these photos didn't exist prior to winter sowing. There was only lawn.

Wow, gorgeous and inspiring pictures!

Gardenweed,you have no email on your member page,send me an email..Nice pics by the way..:o)

Wow, looks like you may have an obsession. You make beds like me though I don't have that property. How many hrs a day are you working in your garden each day.

go to----http://s69.photobucket.com/albums/i60/duane456/winter%20sown%20flowers/
Duane

gardenweed, I always enjoy seeing your garden. I hope things are somewhat back to normal after the storm.

Duane, thank you for sharing your album. Beautiful mature flowers...I'm in love with your foxglove candy mountain! How long ago did you plant them? I didnt have good luck with my lupine this year. Hoping for another try this year.

Thank you both for the inspirational pics :)

nancy---foxglove candy mt. flowered the first year for me. By the second year they were like that. You must realize that I take those pics when they are at their peak.
Duane

I finally took shots of the flowerbeds this year after they'd filled in quite a bit thanks to winter sowing. There wasn't much to see before 2011 other than lawn and weeds. Not all the plants I WS thrived. Columbine has been hit or miss and foxglove didn't survive the first winter. I keep trying with the columbine because the seeds are plentiful from established plants. I'm on the fence about whether to try foxglove again. They're so beautiful but anything that gets planted here has to thrive on neglect. They may be just the other side of too fussy for me & my little green acre.

I can never get pics to load in here, but I connected a picasa link. These June 2010 photos show my beds with many Wintersown plants. Can't seem to find my pic files from 2011 - sorry. But my backbone of all my beds has been homegrown WS plants for years now.

Here is a link that might be useful: Most plants Winter Sown

Thank you everyone for the lovely photos. What a great way to start the day. Gardenweed, your gardens are coming along beautifully. I always love your photos. Nan and Duane, has your house ever been on a garden walk?

Naaaaaah. Who needs that stress???? I find there are VERY few gardeners around here who actually grow their own plants from seed. Most seemingly have endless supplies of money to purchase and plop in plants in and then have their "landscaper' do the weeding and tending. To me, that's really not gardening. I have had a few folks (who regularly attend the various tours offered) walk through my yard and tell me it should be on one of the many tours offered. Then the stop at a group of plants and say "What's that?" And I have to explain that I think it's X, but the person I traded seeds with in Louisanna wasn't sure of the variety and they say "well didn't it come with a tag?" (cause they weren't listening) and I think - - nope, no garden tour hosting for me!

LOVE the pics!! Gardenweed ~ what's the story on that multi-colored walkway? It almost looks as if it's painted? LOVE it!!

sassyb - of course there's a story!! Back when my kids were little, my mom & dad bought patio bricks--red ones and yellow ones--which they used two-deep to edge the foundation beds. My mother referred to the yellow ones as her "yellow-brick road." Over the years the bricks sank beneath the soil surface and the "red" ones faded.

Fast forward 30+ years to 2006 and watch as I try to dig in the garden beds, hit the bricks with the shovel and gradually dig up 300+ of them. Fast forward again to 2009 and WS when I had the walkway behind the garage built so I could plant my cottage garden...and the walkway outside the cellar door built that curves along the low stone wall. I was fortunate to meet a skilled stone worker who could cut the bricks and curve the two walkways. Still have a few extra yellow bricks here and there for which I haven't found a use.

Here's the walkway under construction in May 2010 (the before):
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Guy next door is friends with guy who owns quarry--he took my truck and brought back a load of process gravel for the walkway "bed" so total cost was labor only. The dirt from digging the walkway bed was used to raise the left-hand side of it so I could plant & tend my WS cottage garden perennials. The short, steep hill on the left is blanketed with creeping myrtle/vinca my folks planted donkey's years ago.

After
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Everything on the right side of the walkway + a few on the left was WS--rudbeckia, agastache, Echinacea, verbascum, candytuft, penstemon, rose campion, globeflower, hollyhock, dianthus, balloon flower, columbine, ladybells...

Did I mention I love my walkway?

nan-6161 - is it okay if my WS beds want to look like yours when they grow up? Even with WS I'm guessing it won't happen in this millenium! There aren't enough seeds or recycled milk jugs for it to happen. Gorgeous and stunning, lush and fabulous. Martha S should take a ride out to your place.

My neighbors' garden (just 4 houses north) was on the local tour a couple years ago and afterwards they both said, "NEVER AGAIN!!!"

LOVE the pathway story!!! It is absolutely beautiful.. I really did think it was painted! lol I, too live in my parents' old home and the backyard has a large retaining wall my mom built all by herself... she drove about 20 mi every few days and dragged a wheelbarrow out into the woods and would load it up.. walk it slowly back to her car and put the rocks in the trunk. A true labor of love!!

~Wendy

Ok it isn't flowers but I love wintersowing tomatos and peppers
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I hope my yard looks like Gardenweed's when it (I?) grow up, too.

Here are links to 2 pages of my garden blog that feature wintersown plants.

http://chescogarden.blogspot.com/2010/12/wintersown-flowers.html

http://chescogarden.blogspot.com/2011/01/penstemon.html

Tom, what a fabulous tomato harvest!

Your walkway is wonderful and so is the garden. Makes me want to walk that path.

ooh Tom! NICE tomato harvest..wow! :) So do you have the tomatoes growing up string too or just beans? I was trying to tell by that one pic up there..

Lois ~ I love that pic of the white foxglove next to the birdhouse! looks like something out of a magazine! :)

Lois - ditto sassyb's comment about the foxglove & birdhouse--just gorgeous.

Tom - how many tomato varieties did you WS? From the looks of that harvest, it was more than a couple!

Sassybutterfly,I have them tied to the stakes to the right of the pole beans in the one pic..

Gardenweed,I grew Paul Robeson,cherokee purple,black brandywine and red brandywine and rutgers..really liked all of them,they were all worth saving seed from and growing again,I hope to try a few new to me one's this coming season..

nan-6161 and Gardenweed

I am in awe.

Nan, What's the point in having those beautiful sitting areas? It's obvious you never get a chance to sit in them. You must be busy from sun up to sun down keeping up with that beautiful spread. I'm completely jealous. Thank you so much for sharing.

Martha

I started working on the shady side of the garage in 2006 because it's what first catches the eye of those either walking or driving along the road. It was an ugly mess of lily-of-the-valley, weeds & ancient pieces of scrap metal/wood. Took me two years to even get the LOTV roots pulled up but once I got that done & laid down cardboard topped with mulch, most of the grunt work was done. I mixed up 9 bags of concrete and used a plastic form to build the recurved walkway along the edge of the hosta/shade bed.

I tackled the slope beginning in 2008--just dug a few holes and planted hydrangeas at first. I wanted to reclaim it from lawn so it didn't need mowing. Gradually added more until I discovered WS and then I really had plants to put in the bed. So far besides three hydrangeas there's daphne, weigela, peonies, several astilbe, hosta & daylilies plus coral bells and (off the top of my head) lots of WS perennials: butterfly bush, turtlehead, balloon flower, columbine, beardtongue, dianthus, English daisy, blackberry lily, ladybells, Jacob's ladder, coreopsis, lupine, hollyhock, stokesia, toad lily & Painters Palette persicaria, among others. Thanks to WS I was able to plant multliples of each type so everything doesn't just all blend together. All things being equal, I'm hoping for a much-improved look next growing season or the one after that.

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This year I replaced the stones that were edging the curved end of the bed with alternating divisions of Carex 'Ice Dance' & lady's mantle.
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The LMs will need a year or more to fill out/make an impact. All seven C. 'Ice Dance' plants came from the plant I originally purchased back in 2007. I discovered it not only produces volunteers, it actually does better after being divided. This year I got 9 pieces from the original "mother" plant, gave two to my daughter and the rest are in the photo above. You'd never know they were recent divisions from the looks of them!

In the past I have only grown vegetables, however last year I tried winter sowing, and had to make new space for all the growth. I also planted a lot in containers, anything from recycled plastic pots from others who bought plants to anything I could find (usually plastic) on sale that I could drill drainage holes into. I also got a canoe from a neighbor and used it for a butterfly garden. Here are a few pics!
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WOW! So glad I took lots of pics, what great memories and love to share!

Lisa, the second to last photo...what is the yellow flowering plant?! Gorgeous!

Hey Sissyz,

It is a tall marigold, loved them!

Wow Gardenweed you are a busy girl
And I like your WSown results too Idsluder
Micki

Beautiful pictures!

Beautiful pictures everyone!

Here are a few things of my first year of WS.

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I really don't have a theme for my overall garden, but I did do a little butterfly garden this year. I would love to do a Moon Garden and I'll be growing a few plants that could be included in one (Moonflower Vine, Datura, Nicotiana sylvestris and "Fragrant Cloud"). I could just picture it with this music in the background :).

Brad AKA Moonwolf

Here is a link that might be useful: Music For Garden

Here are some of my pictures:
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Does anyone have the seed to the tall marigold in Lisa's photo? I cannot find it on the web!?
I've got seeds to trade for them...

What beautiful pictures! I am very excited ... my boys helped me get 2 new flowerbeds started today. Both are 25' long! Now I will have spots for my ws flowers.

The pictures and stories are out of bounds! You all are so inspiring! I didn't take many pictures this summer as I had a funeral that just about sent me over the edge but I can say, even during the deep freezes here this winter I had green healthy plants.

SissyZ - I have some and I believe they are just called "CrackerJack" mix. Mine get about three feet tall. Verses the french type marigolds that are only about a foot tall and more compact. I plan on making larger and larger rows of marigolds in my gardens. I just grow more from the seeds from last year's flowers and it should grow exponentially.

Here is a link that might be useful: Where I bought my tall marigolds

Thanks so much for the link!

Hey sissyz - I have some - I'll be happy to send some up to you, just email me your addy and I'll get them in the mail asap.

AWESOME!
Email has just been sent! Let me know what you want off my list, PLEASE!!

*drooling over flowers* Okay, I know we're winter sowers, but I'm still impatient for spring. I've already got a mile long list of things to do in the yard.