Gardening baby steps

After our massive efforts to remove our invasive border grass and really clean up our gardens, I hoped that one day it would be easier. That blossoms would magically spring up when the weather warmed and the plants would spread out and fill in the empty space. We haven't actually become green thumbs yet, but this year I started to see the light at the end of the botanical tunnel.

Spring started off with leaves covering our flower beds "for warmth." Each weekend in March, we picked a bed or two to clear. We picked up the leaves and weeded. I tried particularly hard to remove lingering liriope plugs.

They were cleaned and ready to go. So when the compost and mulch were delivered in early April, we spread it down and crossed our fingers.

Our efforts started to pay off. Anemones that we planted last fall are blooming. Our irises, the one flower that seems to have loved our garden from day one, look even happier than usual. We even had hyacinths starting to bloom until I accidentally stepped on them when spreading mulch, severing the flower and ending its too-short life (oops!).

 

I'd given up hope on the clematis after last year when it seemed to fail to root. But this spring it couldn't be happier. Stay tuned for more pictures soon when all these buds should turn into brilliant pinkish purple flowers.

Even the spiraea vanhouttei, that looked exactly like a twig in the ground for two years, sprang to life and even flowered (it's about 20 inches high, so it's still pretty pathetic - do a google image search for spiraea vanhouttei and you'll see truly how pathetic, since these plants grow up to 6' tall).

Our phlox doesn't look thrilled, but finally some started flowering. The others aren't quite dead...The thyme is very happy and has even started flowering pretty white flowers. We also planted a few other things in this bed this year, since the phlox were taking a while to spread out. So they've been joined by Blue Star Creeper and Veronica peduncularis "Georgia Blue".

Our lilacs continue to do their thing as well. They've lived here now for two years but, annoyingly, have not grown evenly. The white-flowered one on the right is producing a lot of blooms.

 The new white-flower one on the other end, brand new as of last fall, also looks happy.

The purple-flowered ones in the middle don't seem to be doing well at all. They produce blooms, but only a few each.

I can't decide if I should uproot them and plant new baby lilacs, but then they would take a long time to grow and provide height to our garden (and privacy to our guest room). Having one big bush and then a bunch of teeny ones, especially given how slowly plants grow at our place, doesn't seem like a great solution either.

But either way, I'm calling this a success because this is what I see (and smell) when I step outside, right outside my front door.

Now I just wish I could make my plants flower with better timing. Some of our plants are in full bloom, others are about bloom, and still others are past their prime. Our camellias were colorful a few weeks ago and now all their pretty petals are dying at their feet (our neighbor's camellias still have flowers on them, so maybe we could have done something differently to make them last longer?).

We're really striving to have a yard as colorful and filled in as this one nearby. Isn't it beautiful.

We're still waiting for some things to come up that should technically be "spring blooms." Last fall to prevent the squirrels from eating the fruits of our labor, we tried to surround our plants in chicken wire (we're never doing that again - it was such a pain, both literally and figuratively). The May Night Salvia and verbena we did that for still haven't woken up. Hopefully the Black-Eyed Susans will, later this summer.

Stay tuned as the weather continues to warm up. Hopefully the things that are alive now will continue to spread out and fill in the gaps. And new things will continue to come up.