Online Flower Garden Explore the World of Flowers and Gardening

Online Flower Garden is a photographic journey of flowers and gardens made through my daily encounters with the world of plants and flowers. I include not only photographs but the information I know about them as well as any care instruction or tips for you so you can get and enjoy these plants in your garden. I have always enjoyed gardening and flowers and therefore everywhere I go and travel I am always attracted by the color, beauty and fragrances of the plants and flowers and therefore decided to document some of these encounters and journeys into a photo directory and blog with some gardening tips and background information that could help the everyday or ocassional gardener, enthusiast or researcher. Please note all the photographs are originals taken by myself and therefore copyrighted if you would like to use them please click here to drop a note and don't forget to put a link back to this site where photographs are being used online with the credit.

Perennials are probably most popular and widely used group of plants. They are usually referred to plants that live longer than two years. And most commonly in two forms herbaceous those that die down to the roots on colder climates and regrow in spring and evergreen which do retain their stems and leaves. Usually most perennial plants are soft wood which differentiates them from shrubs and trees which are also technically perennials. A mixture of Perennials and annual plants can give you a nice combination for borders where you can vary the annuals each year whereas the perennials will comeback each year.

Climbers are truly unique in creating landscape features they can grow over fences, walls. They create unique tunnels archways and are used to cover unsightly features. Usually they take very little space on the ground and create large cover of green and many blossoming variety of climbers add incredible color during their flowering season. There are also many fragrant blossoming climbers that also add a another dimension to your experience in the garden. Many favourite climbers include, Roses, Clematis, Wisteria, Bougainvillea, Ivy. Plants like Honeysuckle and Wisteria and many climbing roses are very fragrant.

Bulbs are not just for spring, though a lot of early flowering popular spring flowers are bulbs! In fact there are several categories bulbs, corm, tuber, tuberous root, and rhizomes. A true bulb like hyacinth, tulip or daffodil usually looks a lot like onion and has a protective layer which protects it from drying but some bulbs such as lilies do not and you have to be more careful with them. Most bulbs are more rounded with a flat bottom where the roots grow, true bulbs have rings however if some of the features are missing then you don't have a true bulb but a corm. Corms are also known as rhizome or tuberous roots. Some of the better known flowers in this category include, Crocus, Gladiolas and Freesias. Unlike bulbs corms do not have rings like onions. And of course tubers is the other category, flowers or plants like Begonias and Cyclamens are tubers which don't have the outer cover for protection nor the flat base or rings, so it becomes difficult to distinguish the top and the bottom of a tuber. And finally rhizomes are really stems that grow sideways and store food, iris, ginger are forms of rhizomes.

Shrubs are woody plants and differ from trees by the fact that they have several stems. Usually they are shorter than trees and are more dense more toward the ground rather than high up. Some plants such as lavender, roses and such are considered formally as subshrubs.