Garden Glory

 Last week we were looking at a lot of work to protect our bare vinyl fence from getting cut to pieces by weed-wackers.  This week, we are looking forward to finishing the job.

The bare fence did its job by giving us privacy from the neighbors.  It enclosed our property, kept the neighbor's dog from seeing us (and thus barking at us) when we were trying to relax in the back yard, and it was easy to access and to clean.  However, the landscape people did take a toll on it, and frankly, it was boring to view.

The boring white fence started to look
better just with the edgers installed and
the grass and weeds removed.

So last week we bought the edgers and Rick killed his back laying them into place.  At the end of the week, we both worked hard to remove the grass and weeds within the garden.  Thankfully, our city services are great at hauling the debris away each week.

On Friday we traveled around to see where we could get the best flowers.  Surprisingly, the Lowe's right here in town had the healthiest looking shrubs and flowers.  I will not buy any annual flowers.  Most bloom the best through the spring and summer, and we just are not around long enough to take care of them all.  So bushes and perennials are our choice.

Early on Saturday morning, before the crowds were awake, we made our first of four trips to Lowe's to buy all of the plants we wanted to put into the garden.  We anchored the ends of the garden with one Podocarpus on each side.  They are taller than the rest of the plants and will give us an evergreen bushy tree on each end.

The taller Podocarpus is followed across the yard
by the same pattern of plants for symmetry.

Since the house itself is surrounded by various Crotons, Arboricola, Ti plants, and Ixora, we purposely avoided buying any more of those shrubs.  Instead, as we moved across the garden, we added a small, rounded yellow-leafed bush called a Duranta Gold Mound.  That was followed by a red President Hibiscus.  Then we planted another Duranta Gold Mound and a purple, spiky Cordyline Dracena at each fence post.  We followed that pattern all across the garden, ending with the Podocarpus at the end. 

The garden as I look north to our other corner garden.

The garden as I look south toward the large oak tree.

We now have green, red, gold, and purple in the garden offering a variety of textures, heights, and shapes as the eye travels down the line.  

Our "mistake" turned into a delightful
addition to our front garden.

We are hoping for bright flowers
on our new little hibiscus plant.

We made one mistake: as I was taking one of the hibiscus out of its pot, I noticed that the tag on it was different.  Although the blossom on the hibiscus was the same color as all of the other plants, the tag read "Hibiscus Trio -- three different colored plants in one pot."  Oops!  We wanted symmetry in the back garden, so back to Lowe's we went to get the correct variety of hibiscus.  We actually kept the trio, though, and planted it in the corner of the front garden since the Firecracker plant that we had planted there died from too much sun.  We hope the sun-loving hibiscus will survive and add a little color to the corner.

Today we found landscape stone that we will have delivered later this week after we get the landscape fabric fitted around each of the 21 plants in the back garden.  With the one hibiscus in the front, that means we planted 22 plants all together.  Our muscles will attest to the truth of that statement.

We hope that we do not have too much planted too closely together.  If we do see crowding as they grow, we can always move some plants elsewhere.  We just hope they all survive this first year in the ground! 

Rick smiled this morning as he opened the Florida room blinds and saw not a blank white fence, but rather  a wonderful splash of textures and colors bordering that fence.