Barnum Garden Tour: "Barnum House" Front Yard Garden

Today's garden tour looks at the so-called Barnum House front yard garden. The Barnum House is named after the story that P.T. Barnum once lived here (he didn't). Currently enjoyed by only the second family to live there, the original family, the Failings, built the house in 1872 and moved it from 6th and Knox when the 6th Ave. freeway was built.

Our Names: Wendy Lu, Scout and Eva

Edible flowers and some veg - a salad garden!

Garden Style: Mish-mash, xeriscape cottage garden

How Long We've Been Gardening Here: 3 summers

What's New In The Garden This Year: This year, inspired by neighbor Kaye, I installed drip irrigation and what a difference in yield and time spent watering!

A passerby told Wendy Lu this vase was found by
P.T. Barnum in Africa, but the stamp inside reads "New York."

What We Love To Grow: Drought-tolerant perennials, especially flowers, and vegetables. There are also baby fruit trees (peach, green gable plum, service berry bushes) and raspberries. Just added blackberries from the Barnum plant swap, so looking forward to more berries next year!

What We Cannot Grow: Since adding in the irrigation, and because I favor plants with low watering needs, we've done pretty well. I do need to start growing melons earlier, because we often just barely harvest a tiny watermelon in early September.

Biggest Battle: We mulched the entire yard two years ago and since, weeds have been minimal. That said, the so-called "tree of heaven" is constantly trying to stage a hostile takeover.

More edible flowers & kale, tomatoes peaking out.

Our Advice To New Gardeners In The 'Hood: Use mulch, drip irrigation, amend the soil and plant ever square inch to grow food and flowers!

Mini-pumpkin patch.

Favorite Nursery/Supply Shop: I have to stay away from City Floral, but it is coming up on the annual 50% off perennials sale, so I'll be grabbing a few plants to put in before it gets cold.

Bees & other pollinators heart the hollyhocks.

Do you garden in Barnum or Barnum West? Send your pics into the blog! Selected gardens will be featured throughout the summer. Pics can be emailed to welcometobarnum (at) gmail.com.