Gardening 101

Well, we bought our house last November, so when spring rolled around I had no idea of what would be in the flower beds. I have three very large flower beds, each hugging a wall of the house/deck. I noticed that we had one bed that was sprouting quite a few very nice perennial plants, and the other two beds were almost empty....but then something started to sprout.

It was a green and white ground cover, and it was eating up one entire bed… Now don’t get be wrong, I think a ground cover can be very nice in the right place. For example, if it is used to hide a foundation, or fill in around a tree bottom. But an entire bed with just this (ugly in my opinion) ground cover, was not pretty. I am assuming that the previous owner had the bed full of annuals, but I don’t want to replant every year….so I decided to completed dig out the two beds that I didn’t like, and create all perennial beds.

We bought 12 bags of top soil, 12 bags of sheep manure and 5 huge bags of peat moss (and I still have to buy at least one more). We haven’t added any mulch yet…but that will be our next step.

I want to say a huge thanks to my mom and dad who came out and gave Corey and I the Flowerbeds 101 class. We learned a lot, got really dirty, and had a wonderful 6 hours out in the flower beds.

I haven’t taken the ‘final product’ photos yet…but once I add the mulch, I show you all the final product.

Our Flowerbeds certainly aren't finished....but the birds are enjoying the yard just as it is.

This is one of the yellow finches we see outside our window everyday. We also have a few song sparrows, bluejays, robins and blackbirds.