Tess, A gift from a thoughtful neighbor of so many varieties of iris sounds like a dream come true! I had irises given to me this year by six different people. Most are probably the historic irises. One 87 year old lady gave me a start of each of her three irises. I asked an elderly widower for a start of his irises. He was happy to share. He only had one kind, a lavender bi-tone historical, but he was very generous with the rhizomes. I can hardly wait to see them bloom in my flower garden. Walter, I'm a newbie. I notice you said you put Preen on your iris bed and were going to add lime. My husband says lime will kill weeds. Is that what you're using it for or does it serve another purpose, too? I bought some of the 100% corn gluten herbicide someone recommended in this forum recently. I was going to use bonemeal, but after reading the comments about the dogs digging up the iris, looking for the bone, I reconsidered, as I have a dog. Then a lady told me that as long as the dogs have bones to chew on, they won't dig for the bone meal. I've decided to go ahead and add the bonemeal. Will let you know what happens with that. I"m learning a lot from this forum. Thanks. Charlotte

Glad you all liked it. I started reading it before she moved to her present location so I've 'seen' her place grow over the years. The hours she must spend taking care of it is mind boggling.

Both my children had allotment gardens when they first moved out to live in apartments. My daughter kept hers going for many years but my son was disgusted by the criticism from older allotment holders and gave his up. With two very young children it was difficult for him to find the time to keep the lot tidy. He now grows only house plants and has about 50 pots in his 3-room apartment on window sills and hanging from the ceiling. It's quite an urban jungle. He has a large balcony so I think I'll give him two tomato plants and two chili plants I won in a raffle. My daughter now lives in a semi-detached house with a small garden where she grows a little of everything, more for fun than to get a lot of produce, lettuce, carrots, radishes, raspberries, rhubarb, herbs and flowers. I have given her two roses, a climbing Giardina and a new floribunda, DICnarrow. Not an exciting rose but I was given three plants of it. Her older children, 18 and 20, do not show any interest in gardening yet but they are fond of gardens. My grandson insisted that his graduation party last June be held in our garden. It was a great party with 40 guests of all ages. Her youngest is almost 8 and she will probably become a gardener as she spends so much time in our garden and does all kinds of work already and knows the names of trees and flowers. She sowed some nasturtium seed only last week and we keep the seed tray indoors until she can plant the seedlings in her mother's garden. If it works! I've only ever sown nasturtiums in the open ground.

There's a lovely mini garden of just white flowers. Here's the entrance. You're greeted by this wonderfully scented gardenia, Heaven Scent. And of course, the Hawaii state flower, the hibiscus. Lovely lotus Other charming sites definitely encourage children to visit. At first I thought a mongoose had run across my path but when I saw this sign, I realized that the small brown furry thing must have been, as Bugs Bunny used to say, "a wabbit". That's black bamboo and I'm not sure why there's a scarecrow. I've never seen or heard of this flower before but it's a bit orchid-like. I couldn't do justice to all the unique sites but hope you liked this glimpse of a fun tropical garden! Mahalo! Ann