One of the best parts of gardening is sharing the results of your work with like-minded neighbors. This year, MKE Lifestyle asked readers to share their passion for gardening by submitting photos to our Green Thumb contest. Congratulations to these winners, and we hope you get some green inspiration this year.
Climbing Clematis
Jacki Margis of Milwaukee shared her beautiful clematis. These vines are a spectacular sight in gardens, especially when they flower from late spring to early summer. There are more than 200 clematis varieties, allowing gardeners to select bloom times in early spring, midsummer or late summer to early fall.
Margis also sent her garden variety, which includes a colorful mixture of dainty magenta dianthus, coral bells and hosta.
A Real Jewel
You won’t find these gems in the jewelry store at Jeweler’s Guild on East St. Francis in Milwaukee. Owner Robert Devoe grows a vegetable garden in back of his store.
“We have three great gardens at our jewelry store that we use for ourselves (six of us, as well as our neighbors) because we always seem to grow a lot!” says Devoe. They grow herbs, vegetables and flowers. “We love this time of year; planning our garden, getting seed snacks, and preparing for the tastiest veggies anywhere.”
A Rose Grows in Brookfield
Dan Detlaff of Brookfield continues to watch his rose bush expand each year, seemingly on its way to the second-floor porch. “This rose bush started from a stick bought at a hardware store and has grown to this!” says Detlaff.
Want your roses to expand? According to BioAdvanced Science-based Solutions, A dose of phosphorus promotes flowering. Many rose lovers count on banana peels to provide a bit of phosphorus to plants, using two to three skins weekly per rose plant. Put bananas to work for you by either chopping and burying the peels around the plant or by pulverizing the peels in a blender and adding to the watering can.
Container Plantings
Dawn Young loves container planting and changes it up every year. “I have a very seasonal part-time job doing containers for spring, summer, fall and winter for various clients,” says Young. “I recently started my YouTube and Instagram channels to help people learn about gardening and share ideas. (Her channel is “Seasonal Designs by Dawn.”)
Salsa, Anyone?
Doreen Unger of Menomonee Falls shared her prolific container tomato plant. Tomato plantcontainers can be moved to follow the sun during the day; tomatoes need six to eight hours of sunlight to thrive. Young tomato plants can be transplanted into containers earlier in the growing season than in the ground.
Flex Your Phlox
These roses and phlox pair well together in Gus Winter’s garden. Splashes of yellow add to the mix, with gold drop potentilla in the foreground and black-eyed Susans in the background. Phlox can be a stunning companion to your rose garden and is a pollinator favorite. While the tops of roses are nice and lush, the bottoms can become leggy and sparse. Good companions are those that hide their bare legs.
Stacking the Deck
Small-space and deck gardening have flourished in recent years, and DeDe Weinberg of Milwaukee shared a beautiful example. “The garden on our deck consists of a 24-by-48-inch flower garden and a smaller large pot containing herbs,” she says.
“The tallest flowers that I plantedwere ‘tall’ begonias across the entire back, with some salvia and New Guinea impatiens,” says Weinberg. She says Kellner’s Greenhouse helped her design the planter from photos she had taken the previous summer of planters thatI saw around the area.
Companion planting of herbs with flowers has many benefits. Other than enhancing the flavor of tomatoes or other perfect companion plants, growing herbs such as basil can help control some insects, too. MKE