Last spring, Pat built me a raised bed to use as a garden in our backyard. I was all gung-ho about it until we left for our week-long vacation out East. The garden got a little crazy with neglect, and since I had it covered with a net, I just sort of left it for the rest of the summer. This spring, I was pleasantly surprised by some unexpected perennials, including both herbs and flowers. It has me excited about my garden's potential again - I want to nurture it this year and hopefully the bounty of my perennials next year will be even greater.
Here's the state of my garden on May 28th, after cleaning it up and pulling weeds:
At the front, I have lemon balm and chives and near the back there are 3 flowers growing (I don't remember what they were, only that they came as a pack of 4 purporting to attract butterflies). I also had thyme and lemon thyme plants growing in pots that happened to survive the winter too.
I decided I wanted my garden to be more of a perennial herb garden with a bit of space for tomatoes and flowers. I transplanted the thyme, moved one of the flowers over a bit and added a few new plants: oregano, rosemary, one tomato plant and a bunch of Swiss chard. Here it is on June 11:
Since I over-crowded last year, I was a bit more conservative this year. But I forgot: something eats the lettuce and Swiss chard I had planned for the left side of the box. I haven't seen what's eating it, but pretty soon, the whole thing was garbage. So I did some re-planning - some of the herbs got shuffled around because I hadn't considered height when I first put them in. I also picked up 2 more tomato plants as well as lavender and chocolate mint (!) at the farmer's market. Those went in last weekend and here we are today:
I really need to harvest some of that lemon balm - it's growing like crazy! And I can't tell you how excited I am about the lavender and chocolate mint. They're going to make great additions to my perennial herb garden!
I'm so looking forward to watching my garden evolve over the summer - and I absolutely cannot wait to see where things stand next spring!
Here's the state of my garden on May 28th, after cleaning it up and pulling weeds:
I decided I wanted my garden to be more of a perennial herb garden with a bit of space for tomatoes and flowers. I transplanted the thyme, moved one of the flowers over a bit and added a few new plants: oregano, rosemary, one tomato plant and a bunch of Swiss chard. Here it is on June 11:
1 comment:
Lovely garden! Getting James to build me garden boxes is my favourite part of our house :) I bought a four-pack of 'butterfly plants' awhile back too...the plants were put out with support from the Canadian Wildlife federation - you can check it out here to see what you got http://cwf-fcf.org/en/explore-our-work/connecting-with-nature/in-the-garden/cwf-day.html ... i know where I picked my pack up, a bunch of people had moved the plants around between the different types of 'plant packs'. I planted the butterfly flower (orange flowers), tickseed (fern like foilage / small yellow flowers), blazing star (seperate purple and white feathery and tall stalks) and sage (purple / tall). They all died weeks after planting them, I thought they were gone, and then they came back the second year super strong, and I actually had to split all of them except the butterfly weed and got to move the flowers to other beds :)
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