#prairie garden

[hlahlahlahlahly]

It's July bloom in the prairie garden time!!

[thebarefootcajun]

Glorious Beauty

[gigilol88]

Silly little bug from my libraries prairie garden

Then I had the leave because I saw the kid that SA'd me :(

[vintagehomecollection]

The Storer House by Frank Lloyd Wright. Designed as an organic extension of its rugged environment, Wright's Storer house - second of the textile-block houses - rises on a series of terraces set into a Hollywood hillside, its cement blocks mixed with decomposed granite from the site itself.

The Los Angeles House: Decoration and Design in America's 20th-Century City, 1995

[mollybeenoel]

Photographed by Julian Rad

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[geopsych]

Filipendula rubra, also known as Queen of the prairie. (More like Queen of the Faery right?)

[aliciasilvastuff]

From photosofbritain

[the-home]

[throughthemeadowflowers]

Chicago Botanic Garden, June

[leebrontide]

So, I've been working on building up a plant pallet for the back garden. The goal isn't to build this into a to-buy list, but just to have a sort of pre-made plant database for myself, for building my cottage-meets-prairie garden inspired by the plants on the original post. Very much like if I was setting up a pallet for painting.

If you've looked at previous posts of mine about the garden (#Stormbrew Garden), you may notice that this is a pretty radical departure from the pallet in those previous posts.

It's just when I started looking for more of my MN native flowers they were almost all bluey-purple (often pastel) and pale yellow. The yellow was no problem but I wanted to make space for the purple as well, so I broadened my pallet. But focusing on the lavender and pale yellow made the garden a bit cloying for my taste. If you look at the Piet Oudof gardens they're actually a lot of jewel tones and deep colors, mixed in with the more neutral grasses that he calls the "matrix". In his book that I'm reading right now he compares the grasses to the cake part in the fruit cake, with other plants acting like the fruit.

My hope is to dot bits of each of my main colors in each of the garden spaces, but have different colors be the forfront of different areas. Because what I have in the back yard is several distinct spaces with different plans and needs- but you always see the other spaces from wherever in the yard you are, so it still needs to feel cohesive.

The tea-plants garden, for example, is still going to be mainly focused on warm colors, but I'll bring in some of that silver tone. The prairie-bed at the back by the allyway will have more cool colors to add interesting colored texture to the grasses, to welcome the wildflowers into their natural plant neighborhood, and to give it greater visual depth, to make the yard seem further and blend back into the trees on the far side of the ally. I do think I'm going to try to bring in some of the deeper purple tones into the rose and berry section, which should add some excellent drama.

The plant pallet as it stands is mainly 3 types:

Native grasses, sedge and flowers (most of them)

Food (the berries will mostly be cultivars of native plants, the tea focused plants and trees not so much). Most of these aren't on this board.

cottage ornamental favorites (the roses, the heuchera, the yarrow- plants we have native versions of, but these aren't them).

So, stay tuned to see how to goes, I guess!

All of these plants, and several more, are on my Pinterest board, with links to further info available if you click on them.

It's just very important to me that you know prairie-style gardens exist.

Ok. Thank you. Carry on.

[hlahlahlahlahly]

It's prairie plant glamour shot season.

It's also "dream about what new plants to add in the fall" season. I have a lot to fill this year between a big gap in three middle of the garden here, and a bunch of cleared honeysuckle in either side of the house.

Right now the (long version) of the list is

New England Asters

Northern Sea oats

Wild Geranium

Columbine

Ostrich Fern

Dwarf Crested Iris

Carolina Rose and/or Meadow

[bigoldeels]

mini wildflower paintings! soon to be available as stickers/seed packets harvested from my plants.

species in order:

-foxglove beardtongue (penstemon digitalis)

-eastern red columbine (aquilegia canadensis)

-new england aster (symphyotrichum novae-angliae)

-purple coneflower (echinacea purpurea)

-bee balm (monarda fistulosa)

-maypop/purple passionflower (passiflora incarnata)

-blue sage (salvia azurea)

[vintagehomecollection]

The Los Angeles House, 1995

[shutterandsentence]

"I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds." 

~ Psalm 77:11-12 NIV

Photo: Morton Arboretum, Illinois

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Little flower crab spiders enjoying their flower kingdom in the backyard. Cochise County, Arizona, June 2024.