The garden: Before and after

We haven't been blogging much lately - too busy in the garden. The picture above is my mom's potting shed. My dad built if out of reclaimed barnboard and old wooden windows. It sits at the back edge of their property, surrounded by lush, bountiful flowerbeds as well as a large vegetable and herb garden. Pretty, eh?

Now, have a look at this:



This is the pitiful "flowerbed" that we inherited when we moved into our new house. I hesitate to call it flowerbed - more of a graveyard for plants. Look closely and you will see a few brownish lumps that appeared to be hostas in a former life. Those green clumps are ornamental grasses. They were the only things that didn't perish. Also, note the lamppost covered in rust sticking out like a sore thumb in the middle of the yard. Lovely. This is what you see from the sidewalk in front of the house.



Here's the view from the front walk. As you can see, it's even worse than it looked from the street. Nothing but dead plants and concrete slabs.

But have a look at what we did:









John did the heavy lifting and my mom and I did the planting. We started by moving the walkway away from the house, out in front of the front step. That gave us room to build a flowerbed under the bay window. These photos don't show it, but we have planted more shrubs in that bed under the windows now, which should fill in the space in time. Then we re-shaped the flowerbed to make it bigger, which involved removing quite a bit of sod and mixing in new soil and compost (heavy work, done by John). A large flowerbed now curves around the (freshly sanded and re-painted) lamppost and is planted with mostly perennials (hydrangea, lilies, echinacea, and astilbe) and some boxwood and juniper shrubs, as well as hardy low-growing groundcovers (ivy, lamium and creeping jenny). We discovered peonies and hostas growing along the far side of the house (not visible here) and we relocated them to the front flowerbed, too. My parents were a huge help in getting this done. My dad brought loads of compost and soil in his trailer, and hauled away all the sod and dead plant material we dug up. And my mom brought over a fabulous assortment of perennials from her own garden, including a large spirea and burning bush. (Thanks Mom and Dad - Couldn't have done it without you!) My mother-in-law gave me several lovely plants as well, including half a dozen stargazer lilies - I am hoping some of them will be established and blooming in a few months. We're really happy with the the way it looks so far. Now I have to be patient and wait for it all to grow!