Gardens of Shadygrove

After we bought our first house in 2002, I spent a LOT of time watching HGTV. It was a whole new world of possibilities of the things you could do and CREATE in your backyard. Its something that needs to be planned as the changes could be fairly permanent. I and Anshu worked on the backyard ourselves and created a pond with 7 gold fish and water lily etc. And a lot of it is got to do with being patient and be able to see the future (weeds). LOL

When we moved in this house two years ago, we knew better to not rush into things. With the whole outdoor-indoor living theme, our atrium was the focal point for all the creative experiements. Its really very tempting to spend time, energy and dollars on it. This is what we have today.

Water garden:

This is the beautiful water garden that we bought and set up. We put it in the middle of the atrium. I did not get the plants that I was really looking for but that is ok. I got some Hyancinths, floating hearts and some new plants. No fish this time :(

Vegetable garden:

And this year we planted a lot of vegetables- tomatoes, beans, carrot, cilantro, cucumber, serano pepper, capsicum-bell pepper, egg plant and corn. This is the picture of our vegetable garden. We have some in pots and some on the side yard.

Flower bed:

I have some annuals and perenials in here which I planted based on the amount of sunlight they need. There is a beautiful orange Bouganvillea on the side yard and plenty of Geraniums as well that are not in the pictures. Most flowers that have vibrant colors need plenty of sun, which is what we dont have. Pines trees and redwood that we have in the backyard provides shade throughout the afternoon.

Succulents and Cactus:

These are my all time favorites. I like to plant them in different containers so I can move them around in the house. These I made over the weekend when I bought new containers. Eventually I want to build a japanese style rock garden where the annual are now. On my wish list are a Dragon red Japanese Maple for that. And what I also need are some (more) fruit trees. Loquat is number one on my list, followed by Guava, Cherry, Plum (or its variants), Peaches. We have Apricots, Orange and two Pear trees.