plant beds – Ali Does It Herself

You may recall that when we moved into the house the backyard looked a little like this:

That’s a little depressing. A year into our residence here, things are looking a bit more cheerful. You’ll remember that last fall I built my little “folly” in the back corner to house some of my herbs.

I also carefully re-seeded the lawn so it was no longer black.

This year I decided to take it a bit further. The grass has decided to take over the little white stones between the lawn and the patio stones, and I decided I’m going to let that happen. Gren gets very picky about stepping on them and I have to admit that barefoot they’re a mite uncomfortable. And the weeds were trying to take over the spaces between rocks in the spot between the patio stones and the garden bed. Rather than let them win, I decided to take over that spot myself. I had enough weeds to deal with in the garden itself, after all.

So I dug up all the little white rocks and used them as border material to raise the height of the bed a bit. Then I filled it with soil. This aerial view shows you what I now gave myself to work with.

I also weeded out the actual bed so that I could be sure that everything growing in there was supposed to be there.

Then I went to the plant store. I limited myself to just one bag, because I was walking and because I didn’t want to drop hundreds of dollars. But it WAS a giant IKEA bag that I limited myself to. I purchased mostly herbs but I did get a few perennials that I love, like ivy, astilbe, and hens and chickens.

Then I went at it and planted them all! I tried to be strategic about where things went in terms of how high they got and how much sun they needed, so we’ll see how that works out. Everything is still alive at this point, and I’m quite pleased with the results.

My garden is finally starting to be the sort of place I like to sit in and gaze at. So it’s getting there. Plus now I have all these great herbs available for cooking. The only problem is that when I send the Pie out to the yard to harvest some he often comes back to tell me he doesn’t know which plant is which.

So that’s part two of this project: plant markers. I started out with some neon craft paint, fine brushes, and some smooth river rocks.

Then I started labeling. It was harder than I thought to get the paint to function in tiny text but I did my best. It doesn’t help that my penmanship totally blows.