Garden Beds Makeovers!

On Memorial Day while Michael and the boys had a fun time mini golfing, Ella and I had some girl fun buying flowers. At first when Ella asked what we were going to do she was not impressed, but once we got to Lowe's and started picking out flowers for our yard she was enjoying herself. She told me later that when I said we were going to get flowers she thought we were going to take a basket around our neighborhood and pick flowers from other peoples yard. She's so silly! 

My main concern for the day that I wanted to address was this front garden bed. It's always been difficult. For one it's got less than 6 inches of dirt before you hit either concrete or rock. We have planted bulbs in here and none of them came up. We also got this ground cover plant that I wanted to just go crazy and fill in the whole bed, but what it actually does is thrive for a bit and then dies and moves on to the newer growth area. That's mainly what all that green stuff is. 

This is the pile of plants we bought. Ella had so much fun helping me pick them out all the while riding on the flatbed cart. 

I tried to find kid gloves for Ella, but all they had were toddler gloves. She just had to deal with wearing Dad's 811 gloves instead. Honestly I was super surprised that she even wanted to help. She normally doesn't like to do this sort of thing, but she really did stay with me and help. 

First we worked together and cleared the whole bed. Ella enjoyed getting to use a small rake to scrap out some of the harder weeds. We did stop at 7-Eleven for a slurpee on our way home as a treat for all the hardwork we were going to do. She was so cute...she'd work a little bit and have to take a break to drink her Slurpee. She did ask me why I didn't have to take as many breaks. :) 

That's a full wheelbarrow of weeds! 

Here is our finished work! 

I bought 10 of bags of mulch since they were on sale and I really wanted to put down new mulch in all the garden beds. The pavers I got from our backyard...I had to use a dolly to get them up to the front they were so heavy. My parents had just recently given me these nice pots to use in this area. 

We've had these pots up near the fence for a years, but they've been annoying me because they were crooked. The first thing Ella and I had to do was transplant the plant that's in the middle because it was in one of the darker pots. Ella and I bought the purple bushes and we wanted those to be in matching pots. After that we got to work using a level so we could get the pots to look nice. I'm really happy with how they turned out. 

We had a few extra petunias so we planted them in the ground by some lilies. 

We had actually bought too many flowers so I went looking for more pots in the basement. I ended up finding two of these shallow pots. But I needed more potting soil so back to the store Ella and I went. 

We ended up with these two pots with marigolds in them. Ella decided to put this pot next to Penelope. 

This is also when she asked if she could paint Penelope since she's been so faded from the sun....post to follow! 

Once we were finished with our work we sat out in the yard and enjoyed the beauty. I'm so thankful for all the men and women that serve our country so we have the freedom to do things like plant flowers in our gardens and play mini golf with our kids. We are truly a blessed nation! 

Fast forward to Sunday, June 2nd and we decided to go buy a few more plants this time at Carpinito Brothers. The only vegetable that I want to plant this year is tomatoes and the plants that were at Lowe's were not good. We had also been talking about redoing the vegetable area in the backyard. It's never been something that Michael's liked so we decided to make it over. 

We ended up buying 20 plants and 4 bags of topsoil. 

Michael is laying out the plants to see where everything should go. 

This garden bed was something we worked on a few years ago and we put a lot of bulbs in here, but during the winter months there's nothing there since everything dies. We really wanted to try to make there be a mixture of plants that are there around all year and those fun plants that come up in the spring and summer. 

In order to make the vegetable garden look less like a vegetable garden Michael removed the first row of blocks so the pavers are now at the same level as the yard. That made it so he could sculpt the soil so there would be a slope and we wouldn't have to add any soil to the garden to make it mound up. 

When Michael was planning where to put the plants I noticed that we had a couple branches that were hanging pretty low and they were blocking the sun from some of the garden space. Michael cut the first one and then the second one almost all the way until he let Owen finish cutting it. 

By this point it was time for Zeke and I to head out to get his birthday pictures taken so we came home to everything finished. 

Here's the new garden space all planted. Everything in here is a regular plant except for my 4 tomato plants. 

When Zeke and I were on our way home from getting his pictures taken we stopped at Lowe's to get 15 more bags of mulch. The very next day while the kids were at school and Michael was at work I went to work putting mulch down in this garden bed. I still have to put down mulch in the other areas of the backyard, but it's almost finished and it's looking pretty good!