Retirement Days - Shade Plants in the Sun or Adventures of a Newbie Gardener

I know of some people who are gardeners, and their gardens look fabulous.  A local woman who tends the gardens at my husband's business is Jackie Nooney (http://jnlinc.com/design/fine-gardens/.  Click on either the commercial or the residential viewing galleries...she is my garden idol right now.  Fine gardens is what she claims she creates and maintains. Below is an example from her gardening expertise at Stonewall Kitchens in Maine:

As a newbie to this world, I have learned a couple important things with gardening:

1.  Look back at old photos or your garden before you throw out a plant.  Even Mr. Husband doesn't know a weed from a flowering plant you have paid good money for just one year prior.  After much debate (and trying to compare this with that plant), I recently ripped out and threw away that beautiful purple-flowering tall plant in the middle of the photo below.  It totally looked like a giant weed (yes that's what a flowering plant might look like as it gets ready to bud)...arghhhh.

2.  Know where you are planting what kind of plant.  Those little tags on the plants at Lowes are there for a reason.  A shade plant be not happy in the sun.  Note begonias and impatients (partial sun, right?)  in my garden, pictured below.  I thought they would do OK in the front garden (which gets lots more sun that I thought!).  Yep, if you are supposed to thrive in the shade or even partial shade, you shrivel up and die in the direct sun....good to know.

In the sun for most of the day in the front garden...these guys planted at the same time I planted their friends on the back deck....

Happy in the shade of the back deck.....

One day last year, my husband found this bike at a garage sale, came home and plopped it in the front side garden.  "What do you think?" he asked with a smile.  I love it surrounded by plants that like where they are planted....and these guys like it in the sun!