The Klapwijk's Flower Collection

We have always liked puttering around the yard and the changes we have made in recent years to our backyard in particular, have seen us add a great deal more colour and, where possible, fragrance to "the estate", as we are wont to call it.

There has been an almost constant addition of plants to our yards since 1999. While we still have some of the usual suspects in the annuals, our focus has been the perennial side of things, where we have tried to choose plants that not only provide form and colour, but where possible also fragrance.

One of the first fragrant flowers we fell in love with were the Oriental Hybrid Lilies and we must admit to perhaps going a bit overboard with them as we now have in excess of 25 different varieties of fragrant lilies. Not only will a stand of them fill the yard with fragrance, but also your house if you leave the windows open. Plus they are visually real show stoppers, in particular when you get clusters of several bulbs with stems with upwards of 10 buds on them! No doubt about it, we both look forward to the month of July. That's when most of our fragrant lilies make their presence known! Every morning in July is the same much anticipated routine: grab a coffee, let the dogs out, and check the yard for new blooms:)

Since '99 we have seen ourselves focusing on certain favourites, first it was Lilies, then on to Hosta, which have grown into as much of if not more an obsession as Lilies, and for 2006 we have added Heuchera or Coral Bells to our plant variety. Heuchera offer such a nice, wide variety of leaf colour and shape, are easy to grow and most seem to be quite tolerant of light exposure, plus they keep most of their foliage in the winter here in our area, so they provide some welcome visual relief to an otherwise dreary winter garden.

We are trying to ensure an almost constantly revolving array of bloom in the garden and these days we have flowers pretty much year around. We also try for a variety of foliage in terms of colour, texture and shape. It's amazing how many plants it does take for even a small yard such as ours to start looking filled out.

To get an idea of what sort of shapes and colours can be found during the course of the growing season in our yard, just click on one of the buttons at the top or bottom of the page and we'll gladly show you our stuff.