A garden named Valinor

One of this past summer’s great garden finds for Garden Walk Buffalo was Valinor, the garden of Johanna Dominguez, on Mariner Street in Buffalo’s Allentown neighborhood.

Every year I tend to come across a great garden that I didn’t know about previously. With more than 400 gardens on the tour, you can see how that can still happen even after 25 years.

I was over visiting Johanna this week and realized I’d never posted my photos from her garden, other than a mention the post, Garden Walk Buffalo gardens to visit,  this past summer.

I got to meet Sirius Black, Adventure Cat, (with 21,500+ followers on Instagram!), as well as the three other feline inhabitants of Valinor.

The Buffalo News featured her garden here. Buffalo Spree magazine featured her house’s interior, here. Just this week, her inside, over-wintering, house-plant-jammed, office was featured on GardenRant.com – mostly for the fact that she’s released beneficial insects inside the house to control pests!

Here are some shots I took in her garden last summer. To see it your self, the garden will be on Gardens Buffalo Niagara’s Tours of Open Gardens on Thursdays and Fridays in July, as well as on Garden Walk Buffalo.

The front of the house features a bee- and butterfly-attracting pollinator garden of native plants.

Dominating what will be a dining patio on the side of the house is this custom planted fence. Since this photo, she’s added decorative metal screens behind the fence to further obscure the neighbor’s house.

Across from the fence is a vegetables garden hugging the house, outside the kitchen.

Johanna raises butterflies to release so has plenty of milkweed and other natives to attractive them. Raising the butterflies is not difficult, or particularly involved, but assures them a better success rate than left on their own in nature.

Found-art water feature from architectural remnants.

Back private patio off the office. You can see the catio in the back, left It has its own private entrance, for cats only, into the house.

A tree in a party dress! the metallic wrap around the tree keeps the cats off. The tree acts as an air plant holder.

Close-up of the tree’s birdcage, filled with air plants.

A closer-up-shot of the catio. And Sirius Black.

Young permaculture against a back fence includes young fruit espaliers, natives, and other fruit trees.

Love the columnar tree. Small yards deserve trees too. The roof over the straw-bale constructed addition is planted roof. I’m digging those scalloped shingles.