I am paying some long, long overdue attention to the flower garden.
When I first started to garden at Nonsuch, the entire garden was ornamental. I’ve been turning the majority of that into a food garden over the past 3-4 years.
Now, I am going to return a bit of the vegie garden to ornamental. It is the first bed you see coming around the side of the house from the front path, it already had daffodils and some bearded iris in, and recently I have planted its borders with lavender. It does have a few other perennial herbs. To be honest, there isn’t much left over for food growing, and less each year, so now I will return the lot to flowers (apart from the perennial herbs in there, and an apple tree), and it will make an attractive display both from the front path and from the eastern veranda. What I used to grow as food in there I can easily shift to grow bags.
I’ve been mulling over this change in use for some time (a year or more), and it tipped over in balance of the ornamentals yesterday when the horrifyingly enticing Tempo Two catalogue lobbed into my mailbox. Tempo Two sell mainly iris and hostas (next year I will get some hostas for a shady area of the front), and I am afraid I have a deep, deep attachment to bearded iris.
I have ordered 24 – and they are costing me almost $500! But they are stunning varieties and I can’t wait until they arrive in January when the onion crop I have in there can be pulled and the soil prepped for the iris.
I have ordered:
6 of Black Suited (I love black iris!)
6 of Brothers-in-Arms
6 of Eye Candy
6 of Modern Woman (This is not a good photo of one, usually they have much darker and more vibrant colouring.)
The choice was tough, tough, tough. I had circled some 20 iris I loved, but it was better to get a good number of a few varieties than a large number of single iris.
Today, if I can summon the energy, I will plant out some Russell Lupins.
Later – just had to add this video – Simon’s cat – anyone with cats would understand. 
I had to go through this last night … except with five cats.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1qHVVbYG8Y&w=560&h=315]