{Lily's Garden} New Beds

Lily's Garden continues to be a work in progress. It's definitely come a long way (it was once just all grass) but has a long way to go still. Since living at our house for almost 5 years, we've removed the overgrown weeds that were all down the length the of house, added giant, back breaking boulders for two larged raised beds, planted two plants that we received while I was in the hospital (THREE YEARS AGO TODAY!) - a hydrangea and a Gordon Biggs lily, planted about 30 more lilies and many other plants. We also had the fence installed in the back yard, separating the back yard and the side yard and providing a future trellis area (?). We will be fencing the side yard in to keep unwanted pets out (our neighbor's cats like to use our front yard as a litter box!) and creating a trellis/arbor at the front of the garden area to separate it from the front yard.

All of the grass will be removed and replaced with pea gravel and wood mulch. I think I want wood mulch around all the plants (it's cheaper) and pea gravel in the path areas that will go around the raised beds.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

On Monday, I went to town to pick up our new fire pit. I'll show that in a later post. It's pretty!! But while I was Menard's and Lowe's (we got the fire pit at Menard's but wanted to check on something else at Lowe's), I picked up some more flowers. Menard's had two really pretty lilies and I can hardly ever say no to a new lily. It's been known to happen but it's rare. Doug, I promise I try. At Lowe's, it was a different story. The majority of their lilies were on SALE. As were some other plants. And although this garden is a Lily Garden, named for both my beautiful THREE YEAR OLD daughter and for my favorite flower, it also needs some variety. So when I was going through their clearance section of lilies (found a bunch that were 50 cents and 1 dollar!), I saw some other plants that were still in good shape. So I bought them. Three perennials for $3. Can't beat that!

My problem? Where I was going to put them?!?! The front yard needs some help but I'm done with it for now. It's also going to be all white at some point (it's a work in progress). But I was also at the point of not wanting to do any more work in Lily's Garden because I wanted the fence up and then I could plant things against it. I have a beautiful picture in my mind and as soon as I find it again online, I'll post it here. It's my inspiration, kind of.

So I came up with a solution. Yesterday I fixed one of our beds that just had the bricks laying down on the grass as a "we'll get to that some day" border, like shown here. We have about four "beds" like that. So yesterday I fixed that one and rounded one corner to meet another bed and it provided space for two of the new lilies. I then realized that I could do that again. So I did. And that provided space for five more lilies. Told ya I bought a lot. But then I stopped and waited for Doug to get home to see his idea on the rest of the plants. I still had five more lilies plus the three perennials to plant.

We also had the arrival of our first real piece of yard art. Some certain family members may be jealous. We'll see this weekend. But it's awesome. I'll show it to you once I'm done with that area. So between the arrival of the new yard art (which is huge) and 8 more plants, we thought of different ideas.

Well, this morning, I went out to the garden and saw that Doug had moved the plants and the three perennials were in one spot. I took that as a sign and chose that spot to plant them. I read the tags for spacing guidelines and then got to work on the bed.

See the three pots on top of the rocks? Those are the newbies. My bubble bee friend who has been happily buzzing away on my lavender will like me after these bloom some more.

Now, to the bed. See the brown patch? That's where I pulled up the grass and weeds. I did that to the other beds yesterday and it made it easier and got rid of everything I didn't want coming back. I know I didn't get everything, but it's a start. It also hasn't rained here in forever so the soil was pretty dry.

That's McDonald's unsweet iced tea. I've been trying to give up soda and am doing pretty well but I needed a pick me up this morning to help me power through the yard work! And yes, that's my shadow. This gets LOTS of morning sun!

And here's the area once I picked out all the grass and weeds. I actually ended up making it a little bigger once I dug the area out.

See that yellow bucket? It's full of sand. It's been sitting there for years. I don't know why, but it has. Maybe because it's really heavy!

And here it is done! OK, so it's not done completely but you get the idea. It needs mulched and some of the bricks need a little straightening out. The container has two calla lilies and some annuals planted in it. You can see how the bricks wrap around to the front (and back too, but I didn't photograph that angle) and meet up with the other bed. The other bed has rocks as a border after we had some small ones come home with the big boulders. Who knows if they'll stay there, I know that one will not but that's another story.

So what do you think? I'm hoping that I'll get some mulch this weekend for the three new beds I've done. Maybe tomorrow morning will see another new bed. I've been spending about 2 hours outside the past few mornings working and then coming inside to clean. I have a big party this weekend for a very special birthday girl!!!

Can you believe that Miss Lily is THREE?! I'll do a post later on today about it. I have to schedule her well child visit so we can see how much she weighs and how tall. Although she went to the doctor a couple weeks ago and weighed in at 33 lbs, so I doubt that's changed.