Island Bed and Edging

Well, since I am on vacation with no where to go, I thought I would tidy things up around my yard and garden. The chicken house consumed so much time, that some things were neglected this summer. 

 

Here is the island bed with things growing very well. I planted all of this in the heat of the summer last year when the bed was new. I just could not wait until fall. I lost very few things and everything else is doing well. I finally did cut back the huge daisies that were falling over and that really opened it up. I will use some kind of grow rings or supports next year. You can even see my chicken house in the background. I love that thing. The pretty red door is open to try and cool it off this morning.

 

Same bed from a different angle. I am only going to plant a few things into this bed this year because I want to see how the spacing is in year two before I add anything else. I know I planted some things too close at the onset. That should be easy to remedy before this bed is too full.

 

Here is one more shot from the corner of the boomerang shape. I still want to add a decorative small tree in this corner to anchor it a little but I can do that at any time. Maybe in the fall.

 

I am just loving this bee balm this year. It is so pretty even if it is 3 feet taller than the instructions said it would be. I have about six of these in several colors and one is a scarlet double. I like it too but it did not photograph well this morning. Not enough coffee yet.

 

This is a different bed that lines the edge of the raised bed garden. I edged it and top dressed it with new bark mulch. I love that stuff. I have one bed left to do and then all of the finished beds are done for the year. Better late than never. I think that edging everything really makes it look clean and tidy. I love clean and tidy, even if my plantings are a mess. My lupine got powdery mildew this year and I ended up chopping it off to try and keep it from spreading.  This area might be getting too much water being right next to a raised bed veggie garden. I am off to work on the butterfly garden bed and then I will be done until someone (Doyle) get the skid-steer over here to put more dirt in my newest bed in progress.

What To Do.....

I am in a quandry this morning. Do I murder a plant that got out of control or leave it and see if there is any way to make it look pretty again. Daisies are the problem in this equation. I love them but they can be so unruly. This one was not supposed to 'flop'. Yeah, right.

 

Not only did it flop, there are 5 of them in the island bed and they all flopped. We have had some uncharacteristic heavy rain for the last two weeks in this part of Idaho. Although I am thankful for the precipitation, I am furious with the these dang flowers. Stupid flowers. There, I feel better. I actually planted these pencil sized starts last fall and look what they did. They grew like they were on something. I think they like the soil here and the rain. But now they are all laying down and squashing some plants next to them. I just don't know what to do, so for today I will leave them. It is supposed to be 81 degrees today and we will see if they perk up at all. I am not, I repeat, not.... holding my breath. I may yard them out of here this weekend.

This bee balm is new to me too! Same thing, I ordered them as pencil sized starts on ebay and they really took off. Which really is amazing as I planted them in the heat of the summer. Silly me. It was cold this morning so everything is heavy with dew. This plant is 3+ ft. tall already and so far it doesn't look like it is slowing down yet. I can't wait to see what color it is. I ordered some double bloom varieties and I hope those survived. It will be another nice surprise.

 

This is yard art in my flower bed. This chair was being thrown out and I "borrowed" it out if the dump pile. I think it turned out to be the perfect thing to add some whimsy to this bed. The flowers in the pot loved the rain too!

As you can see the final cuff has been taken out of the potato bags and each pot is now full to the brim with compost. These things are growing like weeds. OK, like daisies, but who minces words this early in the morning? They are really going crazy and I sure hope (fingers crossed, here) that the cloth pots are chalk full of baby potatoes. I have a funny way of growing great greenery with no reward, so we will have to wait and see.

All Dressed Up

 

Here is a little before and after for you~ I love before and afters. This is the island bed on April 29 of this year. I was wanting to edge it and top dress it with pretty bark mulch. Last year when I built this bed, the store where I buy my special bark mulch was out. So I was forced to use some of what I like and a whole bunch of really junky stuff from the big box store. This year I started stocking up on my favorite kind and tonight I used most of it. Time to reload!

  

I edged this whole bed and removed the sod layer to use as filler in another project I have going. It should compost down in that area and I did not want it here. Then I backfilled the area between the lawn and the rocks. I toted tons of this mulch from my garden shed to this bed and started top dressing the inside of the bed around all the plantings. Now it looks so pretty and clean. My edges are somewhat wobbly but they should straiten out soon, some parts the lawn were not as grown in from last years tilling of this area so I seeded those spots and it ought to look great soon.

 

I was thinking of planting some kind of specimen tree in this bed, maybe more than one. I really like dogwood trees but was not sure it would stay alive here. I need to do some research. I also love the American Redbud and with proper pruning it should not overpower this area. Another thing I thought would look nice would be a topiary style dwarf spruce. I do not have a formal garden but those trees are so fun and they don't grow too big for the space. One of my other project plans is to begin perimeter planting but that will require a massive bed outlining this entire yard. I need to finish all the other things we have in progress before I start that one. It will likely have to be one of the only things I have going when that one starts. I am so thankful to all the great folks who commented on how to do this. Even with all the gardening I have done, that is one thing I never knew how to do. Edging is a lot of work but the result is so worth it.

Island Bed- Year Two

Last year I decided that the south side of my yard around the house was a problem area. No matter how much water I poured on this spot, it never looked as good as the grass around it. So I thought I would add a small island bed to this part of my yard. See THIS post. I used hose to outline it and after a week of playing with the shape I outlined it with marking paint an begged my husband to till it up for me. I removed all the sod pieces and started adding compost. Lots of compost. I then added rocks to the border, weed cloth and bark mulch.

 

Then, because I can never wait to do things at the appropriate time, I started planting it. I found that a lot of mail order catalog companies also sell on Ebay under a different name for a lot less. A lot less. I also found that lots of people with big gardens also will sell their divisions on Ebay for pennies on the dollar. I started ordering and planting in the heat of the summer. I figured that if I could get 75% of it to come back this year I was golden. 

 

I would say 'Mission Accomplished'. I think I lost a few things. A Honeycomb Butterfly Bush, which blooms yellow and I am sorry about that. A rose bush and a few others. I planted so many things I will have to consult my planting map to be sure of what did not make it. I had put all the hoses away in the fall and then it dried out long before it ever got wet again, I am pretty sure most of the casualties were my fault. I just know I have some holes where there is nothing and I will plant these from seed.  I planted more shrubby type things in the middle of the bed and tried to graduate the sizes to the edges all the way around. As soon as the rain lets up for a minute I will head out and edge this bed with the technique you all suggested. I have already done this to several other beds and it looks very nice. Wish I had known this sooner. Live and learn!

Island Flower Bed

This past summer I had a dilemma. No matter how much I watered the south side of my yard, I could not keep a slight rise up the middle, as green as the surrounding lawn. So my solution was to till it up and make an island garden bed. Like all things on my list, this project started off small. After much consideration and three days reshaping a 150' garden hose into a boomerang shape, this new bed design ended up much larger than it started. "All garden beds should wrap around the house so they look good from all angles." That is what I kept telling my rototiller wrestling husband as he tilled, re-tilled and tilled some more. One very valuable lesson I have learned being surrounded by pasture and field is this: use weed cloth, life will be far less complicated with weed cloth. I started using river rock when we first bought this house because it reminded me of Dunsmuir. Many times as I drove to the Salmon River, 60 miles away, to get more river rock, I have regretted this decision. But it always ends up looking nice (I think) and it holds down weed cloth beautifully. What these pictures don't show are all of the plants that now reside in this new bed. Of course I always feel the need to plant in the hottest part of the summer so it will be interesting to see if most of the new plantings come back this spring. I planted lots of shrubs; roses, buddleia, barberry, as well as many perennials and daylillies. I like things that I plant once and prune rarely. I am somewhat of a lazy gardener. I like to do new things but I don't like things that, once established, are high maintenance. Now... only look at the new garden bed. The planting around the perimeter of the yard are in later installments of my yard plan. Heather's yard 2.0, and the foundation planting are to come after the house is re-sided. I have to do things in the order they make most sense around here. I have a hard time doing the same project more than once so slow and steady wins the race.