Visit to the Pollinator Garden at Chatham Mills in Pittsboro, NC

We were fortunate to visit this beautiful spot on a really hot day in July.  Chatham Mills is a former textile mill repurposed to a multi purpose building with many different businesses and offices.  It has a pretty large parking lot and all around this parking space are plantings of pollinator friendly plants, mostly native.  It's quite showy on a hot summer day.  I will share a few photos with you below.  I love how they plants are mixed and mingled together.  A wide variety of colors and textures.  This garden is several years old so it has mature plants in all their glory.  There are also a couple of areas that are newer and are still growing into their space. Enjoy the photos below and if you are up in the Triangle area any time stop by for a visit. 

Update on the Backyard Garden

We are having a great year in the garden.  Besides the Native Plant garden I started in the back of the yard, Al has worked hard to create raised beds for vegetable gardening.  The earlier part of the summer was pretty wet which I think was a great thing for this new gardening adventure.  Right now, mid July, it's getting really hot and dry so we are having to do some extra watering.  

These are from a few weeks ago.  Since then we've harvested beans, cucumbers, squash and one tomato.  Things are growing fast in the vegetable garden.

And here are a few blooms from the Native Plant garden.  I'm happy with how it's going but it will be a while before it's really full of blooms.  The coreopsis and the mountain mint are doing really well. I'll keep you posted!

Lost a tree but gained sunshine and a garden.

The very large white oak tree in our yard fell down in a hurricane in the fall of 2018.  It was huge and left a huge hole in the yard and in our hearts.  We had hoped maybe the wood would come to good use but because of complicated circumstances that has not happened.  After we were able to have the root ball removed and the majority of the trunk moved back from our lot onto town property we were left with a sunny space we had never had.  I waited through last year's growing season to give some thought to what to do next and came up with the plan to put in some cedar trees on the back property line and a pollinator garden in the strip that runs across the back where the tree had been.  So, this week as we were faced with the impending stay at home order, I went shopping for some native plants to add to my collection.  I had already bought and planted the cedar seedlings along with some shrubs. Now I have this collection of plants that will produce blooms from spring through fall, hopefully.  I spent some time thinking of the best way to arrange them and now I'm in the planting mode.

                                                             I'll share the flowers and what they attract as the year goes on.