Backyard Garden

The garden is done (at least until I buy more plants), the dirt is half gone, and I am pooped out!   I planted the last couple of plants this morning, and took some pictures of the finished product.  The backyard definitely looks 100x better, but I don’t know if that’s saying much because it was probably about a 1 on a 1-10 scale before the garden.

So here are some the plants I put in:

some astilbe and bright green sedum (suggested by my mom) which look really nice together and some baby coreopsus – i think that’s what is was called.  They are just babies right now but will grow really quickly.

A couple of hydrangeas called “blushing bride” that will have really pretty light pink/cream colored flowers.  This one is just starting to get some flowers on it.

I thought these rhodendrons were really pretty, and they will have tons of flowers next spring and stay green all year long.

Here is the somewhat finished garden… it’s still a little empty but will fill in as the summer goes on.  I planted a bunch of hostas (just the roots) that should come up in the next couple of weeks.  I don’t know how well it will work, but I thought it was worth a try!

The roots look a little creepy… but that’s how they came out of the bag.

I have one final photo from our front yard of our rose bush that’s blooming.  It has so many bright pink blooms that I just had to include it with the gardening theme.

Hope you’re all enjoying the beautiful spring weather!

ps  the picture at the top is one of our peony buds!  they are about to pop open, but i thought it was so cool to see all the layers that will be petals in a couple of days.

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Garden Prep

I decided to get started on the gardening while the weather is cooperating and the days are beautiful.  We’ve been having temperatures in the 60s and 70s with sunny skies so this is the perfect time, and it won’t be this way for long in Oklahoma.  Before I started the plans, I went out around the neighborhood in search of some inspiration so the tulips above and the garden pics below are from my walk with Kitty.  I felt a little weird taking pictures of people’s yards, but hopefully they assumed it was because I liked the yard and not because I was scouting out the house for other reasons…

I really like the tulip colors of the yard above, and I haven’t seen that combination very often- so pretty!  They just had a really nice yard in general, and the next picture is from the other side of the same house.

These are my Favorite flower ever, with a capitol F!  I love Peonies, and this yard had tons of light pink ones in full bloom.  We have three of these plants in our front yard that somehow survived the destructive gardening of the past owner, and I can’t wait for ours to bloom…

Here’s the full view from the street- our grass will never be that green!

I wanted to start off with all these beauties, but now that I’m thinking about it, ours might look a little boring after all that color.  You just have to use your imagination with these pics since it’s the beginning of the process.  The first picture is how it all started… with a pile of buried rocks.  I wanted to get rid of these, and then I had an idea that would save me some work and some money.

So I dug out the edge of the garden

and proceeded to stick the dug-up pieces of concrete into the ground as an edge to the soon-to-be garden bed.   This was the finished result-

Now I just need to fill it in with some nice compost and planting dirt, and it will be set.  I drew up a plan for the backyard with lots of hydrangeas and rhodendrons, and I’m ready to make a shopping list!