CORNER FLOWER BED

Here is another project I've been working on, took a couple of weekends of sporadic working over the last month whenever we would have good weather, but it's done...until Spring anyway...

So here is the back story.  

I wish I had a before photo but last Spring I put cardboard down in this corner flower bed.  Then on top of that, I put all the plants in containers that we brought from the house after it sold. They sat there through the monsoon rains and oppressive heat of the Summer.  I watered them regularly when it was dry but that was it.  Well, about two months ago, I decided to clean it out because it was a jungle of mess.  Many of them had grown roots down through their containers into the ground.  Oops!  Most I could easily pull up, careful to save the roots of course but a few had, unfortunately, died.  

Standing tall in the corner was this this, the Texas Lilac (Vitex) and its roots had grown VERY large and VERY deep...AND it was blooming.  The funny thing is that it was sort of already in the perfect spot where I might have planted it on purpose!  So I carefully cut away the plastic container and left the root ball in place.  I dug out around it and settled it down into the ground a bit deeper and then mounded additional soil around it.

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That left me with needing to add a bit more soil to make it all more level so I added one more landscape timber to the height and watered it all down. 

We had a blank canvas to work with so I got busy the following weekend. 

We have a birdbath!!!

OK, so it's nothing fancy, but we're excited. "Ma" left it behind when she moved (too heavy to move) and so it's been in two pieces behind the house, with weeds growing up around it.  It's concrete and does indeed weigh a lot, but I cleaned it up as best I could, moved it, and put it in place.  

We think it's the perfect spot to be able to enjoy it.

Flowerbed

Then I watered it down again (it was a week between steps, ha), and planted some of the plants we already had in containers.  For future color, I started with blue plumbago between the purple vitex and birdbath.  Next I planted two lavender plants (yay!).  Lastly, on the other side, I put in a Texas lantana, a variety with wonderful red, orange, and yellow flowers.  These should all give us a lot of color right on the porch corner by the front door.  

All of these plants are favorable to our climate, especially the plumbago and lantana. Even the lavender is a variety for more tropical, humid climates but we are, of course, uniquely wet and humid so we shall see!  Now we have had the freeze this past weekend so we'll have to see what survived. The vitex and lantana should be good but not sure how the lavender and plumbago will do.  We shall see.  All this work might be for nothing, well, actually, even if we lose the lavender and plumbago, that just gives us space for more flowers, right? 

So, after several "Inspiration Thursday" posts featuring birdbaths surrounded by flowers, we are hopefully on our way to recreating those into one of our own. We want to watch them fill in and then figure out some annuals to plant around them in the Spring.

Let the color begin!