dressing up the garden

isn't this beautiful!  it's a little too dressy for my taste but i still love it.  this is at newton winery in st. helena.

the gardens are amazing.  the perimeter of this garden is surrounded by topiaries shaped like corkscrews. how appropriate.

welcome to the jungle.  you know the words.  c'mon sing it!  this is part of my over grown itty-bitty backyard.  i like an unbuttoned garden if you know what i mean, like crazy grasses everywhere, butterfly bushes, gaura, lavender.  

i like plants that dance when the wind blows.

kind of like messy haired kids.  they have more fun you know, messy haired kids.

i kind of like grown-up messy hair too.  when picking me up at the airport once my dad asked me if i rode on top of the airplane instead of inside.  my hair must have looked like a rats nest.

my husband is the opposite.  he keeps his hair high and tight.  he also gets his shirts starched.  the top two pictures remind me of starched shirts.

the jungle, i mean my backyard, is in need of some serious tlc.  it's out of control, plus i want to marry the formality of the top pictures with the wavy grassy style i love so much.  the craziness is also kind of hard to pull off in a garden as small as mine.

good news for me, the wholesale nursery i go to had 1 gallon boxwoods on sale for $2.25.  are you kidding me?  i'll take 50 of them!  just kidding.  kind of.  i bought over 30.  i hope i didn't go overboard.  i don't want my garden to look too starchy.

looking so much better.  i pulled out a bunch of grasses.  i added lambs ear, mallow, petunias, gaura.  i want to add a purple fountain grass in the mix here, but they get humongous.  i need to find a dwarf version.

my backyard was begging for the structure that these boxwood provide.  this is looking a little too formal in this shot.  i'm going to add a couple lavender plants to loosen up the look a little.

it's fun to mix it up and i like the contradiction of styles.  it works for me in more ways than the garden.