(Flower) Bed Head - Part 1

Focus on flower beds

So lately my big garden plot has not seen a lot of action.  Big changes in my life have kept me pretty busy.  But as an effort to reconnect to the things that make me truly happy I've been dipping my toes into gardening again.  Mostly my time has been spent working in flower beds.  And with the help of my favorite co-gardener it's been a big success.


For my hubbins' birthday I decided to refurbish the plants in the front of the house.  It was already May and the annual shasta daisies and day lilies had not popped up yet - a sure sign they were not.  There were three beds of particular focus: the lamppost bed, the driveway bed, and the bed tucked behind the walkway.

The Lamppost Bed had ivy going up the lamppost, border grass along the edges and nothing else but dead mums from last fall.  The driveway bed faired a little better with gladiolus and vincas popping up here and there as well as some pansies and LIVING mums from last fall.  The Bed Tucked Behind the Walkway, too, had a few straggling pansies as well as some very sad looking ornamental cabbage.  But I knew hot weather would soon end the lives of the pansies and weeds were going to take over soon.

Shopping Time!

The most of obvious course of action was to go to Lowe's and buy a bunch of plants.  Discount French marigolds, Super Cal Petchoa petunias, brocade geraniums, hostas, hot springs lobelia and coleus made their way into my cart.  After I bought all these plants I placed them in the front yard more or less where they were going to go.  The next day the hubbins and I were going to clean out the flowerbeds and plant together.

So the next day we are ready to plant and I noticed a (not so) startling thing: some of the plants had been eaten.  Trimmed down to the nibs were the remains of the hostas and the lobelia.  We have a lot of deer in our neighborhood and it came as no surprise for them to have eaten the plants.  Those two automatically became BACKYARD plants.  Not being able to use those in the front really impacted how we approached the Lamppost Bed.  In fact, we didn't really do any planting there at all until we made another trip the the plant nursery.


After moving the poor half eaten plants to the backyard we started preparing the beds for planting.  This involved removing dead plants, pulling up weeds, avoiding the fire ants that always seem to be living in this bed, tilling up the soil and finally adding some Miracle Grow Shake and Feed all purpose fertilizer.  We put marigolds, Petchoa, and brocade geraniums in the Driveway bed and the Walkway Bed.  Some of the pansies from last fall were still alive and I left those although later in the month I had to pull them up because they had died (although in the shade of the trees behind the walkway I think there were still pansies up until July - which is amazing considering how hot it is).  I also left the gladiolus and mums from last fall as well as any signs of "volunteer" vincas that often pop up in these beds.

We took the other plants and just put them in some pots in the backyard.  You can see that even in May the pansies from last fall were having a blast amongst the mint.

Pot with a tiny coleus and half-eaten lobelia

It was a lot of fun and huge improvement from the way the beds had looked before!  It was also nice to give my husband a present that we could both work on together and enjoy for many months to come.  I'll keep you posted on how the beds turned out!