the Backyard B'zmany hands make light work!

This month’s meeting was moved to accommodate Father’s Day next weekend, so we’re meeting a little early. Bowing to outside pressure, the name of our group has changed to the Backyard Beez, or BYBz. We feel this makes us more fit for public consumption. Some have been reluctant to share our garden adventures for fear of offending with our name, so now we are cleaned up and ready for our close up.

June’s meeting took place at Jane’s and we forgot a camera, so you’ll just have to imagine how bad the befores and how good the afters look!

Our task was backyard clean up. The yard has gone a little bit wild, so we have to tame it down again. This included bagging piles of limbs, cuttings and vines that she had in the back yard. Not exciting, but one of those tasks that is brutal and punishing if you have to do it all by yourself. We hauled about 15 bags to the street at the end of the day! We also cleaned up a little area she can see from her martini corner (am I allowed to say that?) or, if you like, her breakfast deck. This area will be made into a butterfly/hummingbird garden so she can enjoy their activities and antics while sipping an adult beverage in the evening.

Another garden pest was taking over the entire area – honeysuckle. We pulled up reams of it, and Sharon creatively fashioned some of it into a wreath as she pulled it up! We fought yellow jackets, poison ivy, and billions and billions of tree seedlings, but at the end of the day we prevailed! The area was nice and clean, ready for butterfly bushes and all manner of attractive new plants. We placed a bench against the fence and decorated it with a birdhouse and some found pots. A pleasing view and a good day’s work. I only wish we had pictures to show. Sigh.

This month it was Suzi’s turn to harness the power of the Beez at work. We had an honorary Bee in attendance: Dana!

Dana provided all the lovely photography for this entry. She also brought some terrific food to share with us! We want Dana to come back again and again!

Our project this month was to provide some clarity for Suzi. Path-wise, that is. Sometimes we allow everyday obstacles to slow us down. We recognize them as irritants, yet somehow continue to live with them. Gardening is a lot like life.

Suzi had an area in front of her house where she frequently walked, yet she was always getting smacked around by an out-of-control weeping cherry tree and tripped up by some gardenias who were muscling their way in front of her. There was no clear path to the hose either; she had to step around various plants to get to the spigot. Adding to the general chaos, her tree-form lorapetalums were seriously out of round.

Enter the BYBz to fix things up! But first, a photo-op.

Photo op for Beez

So, here is what we started with:

Something must be done. First: Out with those gardenias. There are four in this spot. We think we’ll leave one.

The cool thing about the way we BYBz work together is that we each find our own job once the plan is laid out for us. We all seem to gravitate toward different things, so there’s never any bickering over who gets to dig out the gardenias and who gets to prune the lotapetalums. We pick a job and do it without a whole lot of discussion. Just one of the very many reasons we rock!

We get right to work, and we frequently have to be coerced into stopping to eat lunch. One of the rules we made when our group was first formed was that the only thing the hostess had to provide was water. We were to bring our own lunch and so not burden the hostess with feeding us. However, that’s one rule we all seem to love to break, as feeding each other is lots of fun, too! This time lunch was especially yummy, as Dana contributed a wonderful bruschetta-like treat, and Suzi contributed greens for a salad from her garden. Fresh peaches from South Georgia made their way to the table, too. Yum!

After our lunch break, it was back to work. We had cleared out the gardenias and settled them in their new homes, along with some hellebores (common name Lenten Rose) and iris, pruned the cherry tree back, and now it was time to create a pathway.

Then we re-purposed some stepping stones from another part of the yard.

The stones are set, and ground cover will be grown around them. Doesn’t this look better? It feels like a real path now, and the flower garden seems like more of a garden somehow.

It was a productive and fun time, as usual, and we never cease to be amazed at what only four women can accomplish in one day. It certainly never seems like work! Don’t you wish YOU could be an honorary Bee for a day? Well, maybe you can. Just ask!

Today I wasted $18 on the Southeastern Flower Show admittance so that you didn’t have to. It’s really unbelievable how far the show has fallen. I remember the first one I ever went to in 2004 or 2005 at the Georgia World Congress Center – I was amazed, inspired, dazzled! The spectacular fountains and amazing full-sized landscapes were jaw-dropping as one company tried to out-do the next.

This year, my jaw dropped in a totally different, and oh-so-not-good way. Where to begin? The number of gardens was disappointing – only seven. Just one even remotely approached the level of what we saw in the old days, and that was nicely executed by Bloom’n Gardens Landscape. Her garden was imaginative and well done.

A beautiful arbor!

A musical instrument used in the fountain was inspired and well executed.

Moss covered chairs are imaginative, although impractical. Metal fireplace surround- very chic, very hip!

She should have won Best of Show, but the yawnfest that was Ed Castro’s garden won this year.

Yawn! Nothing to see here, keep moving.

He continues to do the same thing over and over year in and year out, and can probably design it in his sleep. Although perhaps if he designed something in his sleep it might be more interesting. It was the usual turf and evergreens with a few ho-hum pots and a Corylus avellana (that’s a contorted filbert for you non-plant geeks) for the “wow” factor. I guess some people don’t want fun, imaginative landscapes, if that’s the case, Ed is your guy.

Here were some of the jaw-dropping-not-in-a-good-way scenes:

Pardon me, your pots are showing!

The whole thing about the indoor gardens is to make them look like REAL gardens. That means hiding the pots, and taking off the plant tags. This is the equivalent of seeing Kermit the Frog with someone’s hand up his butt. It wrong! It’s just wrong!

This is just beyond bad. Seriously? The black liner, the white bucket, the bricks in the bottom - WHAT'S GOING ON HERE???

And what is with the pipe coming out of the wall? This looks like a drainage ditch. Those are dead azaleas floating in the water. Sad, just sad. This shouldn’t have even been allowed in the show. I won’t tell you who it is, because I am too embarrassed for them.

Take a break-here are some good scenes:

Habersham had a cute little discovery garden using the little cottages they sell. With all the miniature trees, etc., it was lots of fun.

There were some awesome bonsai trees on display. Some were over 50 years old!

Back to the not-so-great:

The Home Depot display was titled “A Symphony of Color” But we thought “Cacophony” would have been a better word:

Ouch! My eyes hurt!

Orange and hot pink, yikes! Okay, so technically all flowers grow together in nature, but when putting a garden together it is generally a good idea to consult a color wheel and use colors that are opposite each other. It’s more pleasing to the eye. But when you’re paying people $10.00 an hour, you don’t get color consultants, you’re doing well if they keep the plants alive until someone can buy them.

Back to some nice things:

Designer displays were sprinkled around, and here are some of the better ones:

Very cool wedding display

Lovely bench and bird combo.

Other notable things missing this year:

A garden by Unique Environmental Concepts. Never has been know to miss a show, and usually wins best-of.

Starbucks – there used to be kiosks sprinkled about, and I was looking forward to sipping my latte while walking the show. There were no concessions of any kind offered in the showroom this year.

The Stick Man - usually doing a booming business selling curly willow and other decorative branches that can be rooted in water and grown, or used as dried arrangements. Sadly he was not in attendance this year.

Overall, the Market Place was as shrunken as the rest of the show. It’s hard to know which came first – did bad attendance lead to a smaller show, or vice versa? I’m sad that it looks as if the economy has taken such a toll on everyone that we are in danger of losing this show. I wonder if there will even be a Southeastern Flower Show at all next year? If there is, I will not be reviewing it, because I will not be going back unless ticket prices drop dramatically. That was a $10 show at best, and it was only because I didn’t want to embarrass Melinda that I didn’t go and ask for the return $8.00 of the $18.00.