Spring Garden Tour

Spring is finally here!

It's a toss up between Spring and Fall for my favorite season, but I have to say, Spring may just be winning. With all it's gorgeous flowers and budding trees, it's almost no contest for a flower lover such as myself. 

Every year, I add more and more plants and flowers to my gardens for each different season. Tulips and Daffodils are often the most thought of flowers for Spring, but I've discovered that there are so many more Spring blooming flowers out there! I like to add different and new items whenever I come across them and I am very happy to report that every new bulb and plant that I put in last year has come back!

Spring came very late this year to northern Indiana and all my flowers bloomed much later than in previous seasons. I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, the bloom season would be prolonged somehow, but sadly, most of my Spring flowers are already on their way out. 

I have to say that my gardens are really rockin so far this year and I am already making plans for what to add next year! The most wonderful time of the year has begun!

New favorite flower alert! Crocuses are some of the first blooms in Spring and these tiny little flowers are actually perfect to plant in your yard since they will be gone by the first mowing. I got a small bag of them last Fall as an experiment and I will definitely be planting more in my yard and in my flower gardens next year!

I've seen yellow, white, and purple crocuses and mine were either purple or white. I love these purple ones with the white striations!

Above is my creekside garden in all it's Spring glory! My favorite thing about it is the border of purplish-blue Muscari. This is my favorite spot in my whole yard. When I moved in, it was just an overgrown eyesore filled with poison ivy. I had to work very hard to get it into shape for a garden and I am very proud of it!

Muscari make perfect garden borders and they multiply like crazy every year, so it only gets better and better!

Last year I planted a mix of Tulips that I got for free, not knowing what color they would be. I was hoping for red and luckily, most of them were! They look awesome next to the yellow Daffodils and blue Muscari.

These tiny little Daffodils came from a mix bag and I have never seen anything else like it. They are tall like regular Daffodils, but have several small clusters of flowers on them. They are very unique and I am glad they are in my garden. That's the thing with a mixed bag, you never know what you're going to get!

I think the best smelling flower may be the Hyacinth. Get around a group of them and it's absolute heaven! I am going to make it a focus to plant more this Fall. Possibly as a border somewhere. I wish I could find this exact color of purple again, it's the only one I've seen and it's much brighter than others.

Inspired by Foster Park here in Fort Wayne, it's been my goal to plant as many different kinds of Tulips in my yard as possible. I love these new orange ones that I planted last Fall and the different color variations on them.

These Lilac bushes literally began as sticks from someone else's yard. Lilacs are very easy to transplant, but they take a while until they bloom. This is the first year that all three have bloomed and I was even able to harvest a few branches to bring inside and put in a vase!

I was asked if they all have different smells and they do! The dark purple ones smell a little fruity to me and the white have a spicy smell. 

Funny thing about this tulip bed. I started it three years ago as a white, purple, and pink bed. My friend had gotten a Tulip bouquet of those colors and it was so pretty. Last year only one white Tulip came back, which I later found out that for some reason, white Tulips are notorious for not coming back like other colors. So I planted more white ones. This year, only one pink Tulip showed up to the party! I guess I'll be planting more pink ones this year! And probably some more white too, just in case!

I'm totally one of those people who can't seem to bring myself to cut my flowers and bring them inside. They just look so pretty in their natural element! But I desperately do want to one day be able to! This is my sole Daffodil, an Ice Follies, that I brought in this year and I only did it to save it because it had gotten cut off somehow. I am planning on starting some sort of a cutting garden so that I can have gorgeous floral arrangements in my home too one day!

I will wrap up the tour with my apple tree that finally blossomed this year for the first time! I am hoping to be eating some delicious Gala Apples from this tree in the Fall, but even if that doesn't happen, these blooms made it all worth it!


Thanks for stopping by and follow me on Instagram @ sweethome.indiana for daily updates on my flower gardens and all other things home!



Next up, Summer here we come!

My Tulips!

After my post about the Foster Park tulips, this one will probably be a let down! But don't worry! My yard will get there one day!!!

I love tulips! I only have a few around my yard, but my goal is to plant as many as possible every year until my yard resembles Foster Park. Yard goals! Hey, they say to dream big! 

It may take a while to get there, but that's okay! I love a challenge!

Here's what I've been able to do so far!

I was inspired to plant these colors together after my friend got a bouquet of light pink, purple, and white tulips. They were some of the prettiest flowers I had ever seen and I thought, "I could do that in my yard!" And here it is! Strangely enough only one of my white tulips has ever come back. The rest have disappeared!

I love these pink tulips! Here's what they looked like closed up.

And here they are fully opened! Gorgeous!

The lone white tulip. I am going to plant more of them this year. Hopefully.

My husband's family gives potted flowers every year for Easter. I started planting the tulips here after the flowers faded. Most of them have returned! It's not much to look at right now, but it's just a little pop of color along my creek and I love it! My tulip plot grows more every year. The dead ones in the middle are my Valentine's Day flowers from this year. They were forced in water so I am not sure if they will come back or not, but I'm going to give it a try!

These were the original tulips along my creek. When I moved in these were here all by themselves and I just loved them. They gave me the idea to start planting all my tulips here, so thank you whoever planted these here along my creek all those years ago in this obscure spot!

Sunny yellow!

Pretty purple!

I almost can't wait for Fall so I can get started on next year! 

Stay tuned!

Sunday in the Park

I have a new favorite flower! Tulips!

I've always thought they were pretty, but I never realized how many different kinds, shapes, and even sizes there are! I am in love!

I had been hearing about the tulips in Foster Park in Fort Wayne, Indiana for years and never made it out there to check them out. This year, I made it my mission! And I am so happy I did. We finally went this past Sunday after a belated Easter celebration. It was a perfect day for exploring the park.

Foster Park has bed after bed of expertly coordinated tulips interspersed between gorgeous flowering trees and other spring flowers such as daffodils, muscari, and hyacinths. There are also a few different groves of gigantic light and dark purple and white lilac bushes. Needless to say, the smell there is heavenly!

This trip was so inspiring! My yard goals have officially been upped! I imagine Foster Park is a smaller scale of what Holland, Michigan looks like during the Tulip Festival ~ which I am also dying to visit! (And even more so now!) I'm just so glad I found somewhere closer to home to visit!

If you live in the Fort Wayne area get over to Foster Park as soon as possible to check out all the gorgeous scenery and flowers before the blooms fade!

Foster Park is located off Old Mill Road near a bevy of beautiful old homes, not far from downtown Fort Wayne. You can see some of the huge lilac bushes behind the sign.

The park entrance. Everywhere you look there is something beautiful.

Red and pink are one of my favorite color combos!

I'd live in this house! What a great view!

I sooo love this bed! These colors together are perfection!

This is a replica of Abe Lincoln's cabin. Look at all those trees! And flowers! Gorgeous!

This area just looks so magical! I love the shape of the trees, it's like a set of tree tunnels.

Girls were getting their prom pictures taken and families were taking pictures everywhere. This park is such a gorgeous backdrop this time of year!

These people were getting their wedding pictures taken. They may have even just gotten married here. After seeing this, I was rethinking my decision to have gotten married at the Botanical Gardens.

These giant clusters of lilacs looked like grapes!

I think this is a dogwood tree. Possibly. Whatever it is, I love it!

Ok, so I am definitely going to do this combo in my garden! I just love the colors! I already have the muscari!

This is a tulip! Not quite what you imagine when you think of a tulip. It looks like a peony. In fact, I think it may be a peony tulip! One thing I think I would add to the park is a description of the different tulips.

Purple and red! So many different varieties!

These look like flames!

Very springy colors!

I generally prefer a more rigid color scheme, but all these different colors together have me rethinking that. I think I could live with a bed of all different colors. You never know, something like this might turn up in my yard next spring!