Thursday, May 17, 2007

Garden edging

This past week was a productive one for the outside of the Money Pit at least!

We smoothed out some parts of the yard that were un-mowable piles of dirt covered with weeds! I jammed up the mower a few times trying to cut them down. So I had dh go get my Dad's bucket tractor & smooth things up a bit. Now I have patches of dirt that will eventually be grass covered & as a bonus I had an abundance of rocks.


So I loaded them up in the kids red wagon & rolled them out front to edge one of my front yard gardens.




If you look at the front photo of my house you can see the sad empty space in front of the stone on the porch. The sad pointy evergreens are long gone & what you aren't seeing is a garden, landscaped & edged. There were actually plants here! A sad little azalea shrub on either side of the stairs, and misc other plantings. The previous owners had even used landscape cloth. When I ripped it all up (it just looked sickly!) I found that neither of the shrubs had ever outgrown their original root ball. The evergreens were still in their burlap. Since then I have been privileged to enjoy the work of former owner planting bulbs. There are multiple layers of flowers. In the early spring I enjoyed the white & purple crocus that came up, and now these are covering the entire length of my porch.

I have planted 2 Wisteria that climb up the posts, we almost lost one this spring to the unseasonably late cold weather, thankfully it has finally started to leaf. Last year I planted a mini rose bush I had received for a holiday, I was able to divide it into 2 plants so there is one on either end as well. Just this week I was at Aldi & bought a climbing peace rose for $3.99 and planted it to the right of the stairs.

The forget-me-nots are just getting started & will be in full force once the current display dies off. There is a daffodil in there & a tulip, but I think it got mowed.

This year we are going to focus on the right side of the stairs garden & getting a couple trees planted out front. I hate to cover up the facade, but we get a healthy wind as there is a wide open field across the street. DH wants to plant cherry trees, I guess I can live with that, at least they will be pretty in the spring.

4 comments:

Stephanie Appleton said...

Edging looks good. Have to like free! The flowers are beautiful!

Thanks for the Make It From Scratch entry!

Jenn @ Frugal Upstate said...

I totally envy your house! It looks beautiful. I always wanted a house with a tower, instead I live in a 1970's square (ok, rectangular) box. Sigh.

Isn't it great to inherit a lot of bulbs. We have a daffodil and tulip display that folks in town actually drive by to see, thanks to the previous owners. On the other hand they were fond of that awful landscaping cloth too. Ick. Hate the stuff!

Alexandra said...

Those flowers are beautiful. Did you say they were Forget-Me-Nots? I'd like to try those in my yard.

We have a Japanese Cherry tree and love it. I think the National Arbor Day Foundation sells them inexpensively. We've purchased from them before, and they also send free trees and bushes, if you join for $10.00 a year, or something like that.

Lisa Knight said...

Took a bit of research but the flowers in full bloom in the pics are Hyacinthoides hispanic (Spanish bluebells) I have a mix of colors. The forget-me nots are starting to bloom now that these guys are subsiding.

Thanks for the comments on the house! I like my house most of the time! We are searching for pics from when it was first built to try & get it back to original. We do know that the south turet has wood "fishscale" siding under the ugly yellow vinyl. We are considering "barn siding" like Stephanie is doing. Taknig it to a more rustic look, since most of the "victorian" charm is gone anyways.