Today’s photos come from Donald LaGrand.

I want to share with everyone the progress on my master plan layout of the gardens here in Somerset, California. The photos are from throughout the year.

We have a little over four acres of property, and two acres are being transformed into a massive garden layout. There’s a rose garden, a California native garden, a lavender garden, a rock garden, a butterfly garden, a hummingbird garden, and half an acre of Barbera grapes that we harvest every year and sell to the local wineries.

It’s been three years since we started this undertaking by establishing the foundation plants first, like the many trees we have planted. The 44 roses were planted bare root in February of this year. They were slow getting established, but once they were, they grew to 2 feet tall and produced many blooms.

It’s a labor of love, and the design is finally starting to show its beauty as the plants begin to establish themselves and are on display as you walk through gardens in the morning with a cup of coffee in one hand and a pair of clippers in the other.

Happy gardening everyone!

Some of the trees planted early in the development of the garden display their fall color.

Creative use of old stumps, turned into planters.

Rows of grapes, with wild buttercups blooming in the grass between them.

The roses are blooming already. They’ve been planted on a wide spacing so they’ll have room to reach their full, mature size.

Close-up of a flower from one of the rosebushes.

A rose loaded down with beautiful blooms.

Grapes ready to harvest!

The grape harvest, ready to be sold to local wineries.

Another view of the garden, with the grapevines showing their autumn colors.

The beautiful orange flowers of lion’s ear (Leonotis leonurus, Zones 8–11)

Have a garden you’d like to share?

Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!

To submit, send 5-10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.

If you want to send photos in separate emails to the GPOD email box that is just fine.

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