One of the most ambitious projects I’ve ever done on my own was to put in the new flowerbed that I wanted to create. I love looking through Better Homes & Gardens, and seeing people’s backyard oases, and I wanted to create something like that in my own yard. Plus, the all grass look is fairly depressing, at least to me, especially when it’s mostly weeds!
So I wanted to put in a flowerbed along part of the fence at the back of my yard. I took a little trip to Home Depot and started with the edging – I really wanted to get some of the edging that looks like a small retaining wall, but I thought that might be even too ambitious for me, so I ended up with a red brick scalloped edging – it’s curved, so it gave the bed a far more interesting shape.
I also looked at all of their perennials and pretty much bought two or three of each kind that they had – I want a garden that will bloom year after year, not something that I have to invest in replanting every spring.
A cart full of gardening supplies!
Lots of brick edging for the yard!
Pre-setting the garden
Once I got everything home, I started with setting up the plants the way I wanted them. Then, I set up the bricks.
This was the easy part.
Next, I had to pull out the grass from this area – I should add that it was crazy hot and humid that weekend, so about every thirty minutes, I had to go inside and drink an entire glass of water. It was really hard/dirty work!
The hardest part was tearing out the grass, replanting it elsewhere, and then putting in the edging. Once that was done, I put down a layer of weed blocker fabric and then I had to drag the dirt over and put that in there…of course, at that point, I realized I had FAR less topsoil than I needed. Fabulous. That led to trip #2 to Home Depot.
Placing the plants again
It took forever, but it was worth it!
At the end of day 1, I was SPENT, but I could see the end in sight. I was also covered in dirt.
Day 2 involved that second trip to Home Depot, and finally I was on my way to finishing.
I got all the soil in the bed, and planted my flowers!
Woo hoo!
I put in a lot of beautiful perennials:
These calla lilies are gorgeous
Blue fescue grasses
These pink lovelies
Digitalis
These pretty purple flowers
Stuck in some lavender for good measure
It’s really lovely! Of course, I left this right after putting it in, and didn’t have a sprinkler on it. I was just hoping for enough groundwater and rain to carry it through.
When I got back, the garden looked like this:
Not too bad
The plants were looking a little rough, but some of that could be natural falling off of flowers, etc. And now I’ve put a soaker hose in there too, so it should be fine for the future!
. We’ll see what I decide for those!
