Show us your garden beds!

Allll of this grid making and record keeping and planning is a winter occupation designed to keep me from going nuts.
I am glad to have the time to make plans but as I have learned on DG "be prepared for change"
This is another Photoshop pasted plan.
The orange lilies and white Jap Iris and astilbe at the lower right edge were there from last years "Just buy what I want and dont plan anything" plan.
I've learned thats a BIG mistake, now I will have to move a few things inorder to get the color transitions I want.

That looks so good! It sounds like you do the same things I do to keep from going insane during winter! : )

Yes I just make up projects thatbtake a lot of organization and go to it.

I started a project in fall - this is what the spot looked like before.

Here's what it looked like when I was done. It still needs some mulch in spring. I planted a bunch of daffodils and edged it with Red Sweet Williams.

Okay I realized that was the wrong picture, that one was before I finished planting stuff. This should be the right one.

You can see behind the red bush that there are sticks of what used to be that giant invasive honeysuckle. I chopped it down with hand pruners as much as I could - I attempted to dig it out but I couldn't even penetrate the soil around it. I plan to have dh take a chainsaw to it in spring.

This message was edited Feb 15, 2009 11:47 AM

Its going to be great.
Did you move the blue pladicodon to the front of the row?
It looked like the short variety I have.

This is another shot also showing another spot I was working on.

I think I left it where it was, I started a bunch from seed last year and planted them all along the front of those shrubs on both sides. : ) Hopefully they'll be short like their parent. That plant was out by the road when I move din here and I dug it up and moved it closer to the house where I could enjoy it.

I'm not good with cultivar names but that short one is a beauty, the blue is so intense.

I tried to figure out which one it was in plantfiles and I think I decided it looked like Fuji Blue. http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/54114/

I checked my info and I actually had Sentimental Blue http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/56019/
It could be either though.

This message was edited Feb 15, 2009 12:07 PM

Can I ask everyone's opinions on what you all think would look good in a narrow bed along a fence? Here is a picture of the area before I planted it. http://davesgarden.com/tools/blog/viewimage.php?did=46958 I did plant a bunch of stuff there, but it just didn't look right to me.

meredith looks like you made good progress! what are you thinking about for the bed - shrubs, plants, a tree?

Well, my dh doesn't want anything that will block the view of the pool. So that limits me with height.

Daylilies would look nice along with other perens no more than30" high
Try annuals in the height you think you want, you will not have to move them the next year if its not what you want.

Thanks ge! I was trying to find a picture of what it looked like. This was late summer, there is a lot of seedlings in there so it looks a lot more bare than it will this year. I think my problem was not enough of the same thing perhaps.

While I was trying to find that picture, I found a few others too. I found one of my huge bed that I posted before, from far away, so you can get the idea of how it looks.

I can't wait to show you this bed this coming year. I did a lot to it to make it look better but here is how it looked last year. This I call my tool shed garden. : )

Like homer simpson says Douh! Here's the pic.

This is a faraway shot of my front garden I already posted, after I had moved stuff around so the heights worked better.

A little closer. These pictures all made me remember how much mulch I need to order come April! : )

meredith it looks like you are doing pretty good there already

Thank you. It's been like my full time job for 3 summers. Still BIG plans to come. : )

Just follow your own good ideas,your gardening ideas are fine,I like the way thedifferent heights make the eye travel.

Thank you so much. I was just thinking about how maybe I will plant red buckeyes behind the waterfall area. I have one that I will be hoping to see bloom this spring for the first time. I planted it spring 2006 bare root and haven't seen one yet. I should have mentioned that I like planting for wildlife. Shrubs that provide nectar, berries for birds and such are pretty much on top of my list. Added bonuses like pretty fall color are wonderful too.

Meredith - I am going to concentrate on hummers, butterflies and bees. So I like your idea. I dont know jack about flowers so you go girl.

I could give you lots of names of plants! I want to try some viburnum, preferably native. They are supposed to be tough plants. I'm restricted to only a couple species because of my dry site. My yard is naturally dry sandy soil. Most of the weeds I found here were ones that do well in disturbed sites and waste areas. So I don't have the best soil to work with. Bummer but it makes things interesting. : )

I get a plant and DH takes and mixes 50% loam, 25% peat moss or spagmum (sp) and 25% cow manure. We have not lost a tree or plant yet, this is just the backyard. We have what ever the truckers hauled in. 90% gravel.

The rest of the place is rocks, clay and a little dirt.

Oh wow that sounds like what I 'Try' to do. It gets so expensive though, so I've been trying to make the bulk of my decisions on how much drought the plants I pick tolerate. That way I can water less and amend less. I've bee trying to keep my plans so I have small sections of beds that need lots of water. That big bed I did I would like to eventually turn into a rain garden. I figure it is low and in a covenient place to tunnel some pipes from the gutters we plan to install eventually. It's a toss up though because dh doesn't really want gutters. I opnly want them so I can have a rain garden! : )

We sound like we are in the same boat........ Make Compost! I have had 2 hole years to start, and what have I started....Nothing.... Nilch,,,,,Notta...... Thats it, Compost this year if its the last thing I do.

Ha ha me too!! I put some pallets down and started throwing some leaves and kitchen scraps and old potting soil and such. But I need to put some wire around it in spring - then I can really say I've started! : )

I threw some onion skins out once but never found them again. Wow Wow Wow.

Lol! You know I was looking up Virburnums and I realized this was a wonderful site for helping me decide what I want to get. I thought you would find it interesting. http://www.abnativeplants.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=plants.plantdetail&plant_id=19

Added to my Favs.

Your gardens look great Meredith. You may have said it before, but what is that flower blooming on the trellis?
Viburnums are one of my favorite shrubs, too.
I am in the same boat. I have been planting like crazy for 4 years just to have flower beds. This past year things really came into their own. I will probably spend this summer moving things that are now too close.

Thanks cyndie, that flower on the trellis is a mandevilla. My dh got it for me for mother's day. I tried overwintering it indoors, but I think I might have left it out in too cold a weather because it isn't showing any signs of life so far. When I dug it up to bring it in - I planted a Clematis in it's place - Josephine. Hopefully she will do well to take the mandevilla's place there. I had Josephine in a different spot that I don't think got enough sun because she had no blooms last year.

josephine is an excellent clem meredith

I think she's a beauty, but I have had problems with wilt : ( Her the year before last and last year my multi blue. Hopefully they grow out of it.

I am a big fan of the viburnums both in the beds and in the yard. Here is a collage of one bed that has a wonderful old Viburnum carlesii in it, which smells divine in the spring when the tulips are out but then it is pretty dull through the summer, but it does put on a nice fall color show. I am hoping to grow some clematis on it this summer. Patti