Aftermath ... and insight

So the Garden Conservancy event is over ... and I take up my camera the next day, June 30, to see what I missed, being totally distracted the day before. First, above, the entrance through the shade garden ...Pulmonarias must love hard clay and root competition. Mine are thriving, so I intend to add more. The raised stone planting beds are newly planted and in their first season. I imagine they'll eventually vanish, at least in the growing season.Looking round the bend to the sunny wet prairie.Where the gravel path enters the sun, a colony of Carex muskengumensis adjoins an even larger colony of Petasites x Dutch (meaning someone thinks it's a hybrid from Holland) and Darmera peltata. I don't know the name of the Thalictrum, but it must be around eight feet, and it stands tall through winter.Looking back toward the entrance to the woodland garden ...Looking up the evolving white hydrangea bank toward the house. Notice the windows and doors reflect the landscape like a wall of mirrors. Not a good thing for the birds, who sometimes unfortunately try to fly through the glass. Petasites growing in the drainage channel running toward the long pond ...The main path across the garden ...Mounds of Sanguisorba, Joe Pye Weed in the foreground ...One of a multitude of self-seeded Cup plants (Silphium perfoliatum) just about to flower ...Part of the long field of Queen of the Prairie (Filipendula rubra 'Venusta') stretches about fourty feet across the central garden, just about to burst into candy floss pink bloom.Continuing along the central path ...Silphium perfoliatum buds ...Button Bush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) ...Looking across to the newly built reflecting pool and new plantings surrounding it. These plantings probably need only one year to better integrate with the rest of the garden. (They're not bad now.)View toward the house, across the almost invisible reflecting pool ...... a little closer and you can make out the pool ...The entrance to the new pool, with the ground mulched until the new planting grows in ...The central sitting area with the Wave Hill chairs ...The circle of red logs ...Mounds of Miscanthus 'Silberfeder', Pycnanthemum muticum and Petasites in a big planting on the backside of the garden. Inula racemosa has seeded in--too much, I think--and I'll be pulling most of it out in a few days.Same planting, from the other end ...The far sitting area, hidden by hydrangeas ... a Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) hedge at the side and back is nearing four feet. I look forward to having a fully grown hedge to enclose this space. This is a wonderfully private place to sit at sunset.The path out the other side ...The wood pile, gradually fading behind the plants. That's a Tulip Popular rising in the right background.Across the garden is this new space I want to make into a fernery. I'll add many new ferns to the colony of Osmunda cinnamomea (Cinnamon fern) already here--Matteuccia struthiopteris (Ostrich fern), Polystichum acrosticoides (Christmas fern), others that can take advantage of the wetness of the area. I moved a bunch of Ilex verticellita here in early spring.  If they grow well their berries should add fall color and interesting higher structure. I think some stone, possibly a new stone wall, might be good here.The path by the pond, returning to the house and upper level garden ...  Now looking down at the other pond from the opposite side of the upper level garden ... A part of the planting (much is self-seeded) up top, Geranium 'Rozanne' and Asclepias tuberosa in flower. The tall things are Patrinia scabiosifolia.Looking back over these images, I realize the growing importance of the interplay of light and dark, sun and shade, as the garden matures into its eighth year. I recognize this now because the wall of tall white pines that shielded the southern border of the garden fell in Hurricane Sandy last fall, bringing in much more light, and making the shade cast by the trees within the garden much more pronounced. The experience of the garden is changing rather dramatically. I'm seeing that for the first time.