osprey94's Blog

I don't know what the heck to call this garden in the front of our house I wrote about last time. It's been so many things. For a long time we called it the "herb garden" because that's what it was when we first moved in, but the herbs are long gone. I'll think I'll call it the bird garden because our feeders are all located in this area and we want to design it to attract as many of them as possible. 

So, anyway, the bird garden used to look like this:

We had this area covered in black plastic over the winter to kill/prevent weeds. 

From this direction, you can see the many little planters we inherited. The planter boxes that I DESPISE. If that fence were not there, you'd see, right beyond it, that area in the front of the house that is covered in black plastic in the previous pic.

So, you can see how incredibly ugly this area is. But it has potential. So, we pulled out all those boxes and the two California lilacs you can see peeking over that fence in the middle. We yanked out those fences too. Next, we dumped some gravel down the middle of the "black plastic area" (without plastic now, of course) as a large, curving pathway and on either side of it, we're dumping tons of soil mix to make beds. We're not going to even attempt to plant right in the ground. It's just solid clay here. So, here's  how this area looks now.

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 In this one, you can see the California Lilacs we later pulled out. They weren't looking good and they blocked the view to the feeders.

I'm going to build a bed all the way around this corner of the house (far right of pic) that sweeps from the deck to this porch, too. Gotta figure out where to put those whiskey barrel planters, now. They're full of hosta and ferns.

Oh! We also added a bunch of hosta and bleeding heart to some empty spots in between the rhodies by the front door. You can see them there, in the middle of the pic. I think if I had to grow only two plants (not including veggies), I'd grow hosta and ferns. There's something so lush and cool and yet welcoming about the combination of the two. If I could only plant two kinds of veggies, it'd be tomatoes and cucumber. If I had to plant only two kinds of herbs, it'd be basil and cilantro.

 This is a fun game. Anyone wanna play, too? If you could only grow two...veggies, perennials, herbs, flowers, etc, what would YOU grow?