The Black & White Garden (formerly just the White Garden) at the Inn on Mill Creek B&B is a small garden space — work in progress — where we’re growing plants with white or black blooms and/or foliage. Let’s take a look and see what’s blooming in June this year.
We’ve progressed quite a bit with the Guest Favorites Garden since we last updated you in August of 2014. As many of our blog readers know, we created a new garden space (Innkeeper Brigette just can’t stop), dedicated to plants/flowers that our guests love.
For a few years, we (we meaning Brigette) had a White Garden going at the Inn on Mill Creek B&B near the Mountain Laurel Room. A White Garden is the kind of garden that has only white blooming flowers and white or silver foliage plants. So, for example, we have white shasta daisies, white astilbe, white daffodils, white lilies, white irises, white roses, a white butterfly bush…and so on.
We’re excited to announce a little (well, two little and one big) facelift to bathrooms in three of our guest rooms. Two rooms, the Mountain Laurel Room and Maple Tree Room, have new tile showers, while the most popular room at the Inn on Mill Creek Bed &Breakfast, the Evergreen Room (formerly the Lake View Room), has a brand new bathroom with walk-in tile shower and large jetted air spa tub.
One big misconception about Bed & Breakfast lodging is that you have to share a bathroom. This outdated stereotype is present in virtually every editorial, satire piece, and article criticizing B&Bs. It is the question we get most often from guests inquiring about staying at the Inn on Mill Creek. Well, fear not! According to a recent study of the industry, almost 95% of B&Bs do NOT have shared bathrooms, including ours.
Heading day by day into Spring… one day closer… one day closer… we’re ready to see some blooming flowers and spring-y sunny days, how about you? While we wait for those first crocuses to pop out of the ground and make us happy, we’re perusing various magazines and garden catalogs in search of some new garden ideas. You know we (“we” meaning Brigette) can’t stop when it comes to gardening!
As summer winds down, our Guest Favorites Garden planning is going full speed! Spurred on by the lovely late August color palette of our hydrangea and coreopsis in the garden, shown below, we’re looking into spring blooming favorites of our guests that would have similar and complimentary tones.
Earlier this year, we revamped the Mountain Laurel guest room at the Inn on Mill Creek B&B, replacing the queen bed with a king bed, putting in all new furniture, and adding a hand-painted mural on the wall. So let’s see what we did!
The Inn on Mill Creek Bed & Breakfast has
a small herb garden within the Pool Garden (our garden that used to be a
swimming pool way back when). At our elevation in the North Carolin mountains, 2,300 feet above sea level in Zone 7b, some herbs overwinter just fine, while others are basically annuals. This means our herb garden has changed its look practically every year. But over the course of six years, one thing has remained certain: the Herb Garden has slowly become nondescript and has lost its identity, blending in with the rest of the Pool Garden over time.
| Hydrangea in the Inn on Mill Creek Guest Favorites Garden |
As we head into summer, our Guest Favorites Garden is slowly beginning to take shape. We added a beautiful hydrangea near the stone-faced column and planted three dark pink/red azaleas in the shady portion of the garden. In addition, we added a barberry bush and shasta daisies to the sunny portion. Keep in mind we get plants from nurseries and let them fill in over time, so our plants are “babies” this year.
