My Spring 2023 Garden

Since I spent the entire day mowing the lawn and working in my garden (it’s 8pm now), I thought I would write about all my gardening projects.

Last summer, I spent most of the time replanting grass primarily in my backyard. I had a yard and a half of loam delivered to my driveway, and though I used a ton of it, at least some of the dirt pile remained in my driveway till October. That was a ton of work!

So imagine my disappointment when I realized that some of the new lawn closest to the woods in my yard wasn’t coming back. After all that work, grrrr.

I absolutely couldn’t deal with re-planting grass this summer, other than a few areas that needed it. So I decided to rethink what I could do with my backyard.

New Shade Garden

The first thing I did was decide to give up on the back of the yard closest to the woods. I bought a blue metal bench from Wayfair during their spring sale. Although it blocks the view of one of my woodland gardens (hostas and lilies of the valley), it’s comfortable and attractive.

Once it arrived and Jeff assembled it for me, I thought I should create another larger shade garden to the right of the new bench. I carved out an curvy plot, and I added lots of new green hostas that I got for free from the Buy Nothing group on Facebook, I bought a few fancier hostas, heucharas, a brunnera, and I moved a couple of perennial geraniums, amsonia, ligularia, and hellabore to the new garden.

The new shade garden served as a connector to the formerly random hostas that I had lined that part of the yard with. It makes sense.

New Side Yard Walkway

Years ago when I first moved into the house, I planted lilacs along my narrow side yard. There were lilacs along the side of the house I grew up in and I adore the fragrance of lilacs, so I decided to plant them in the new house. I also added a mop head hydrangea.

Unfortunately, my original/former next door neighbor made some really ridiculous and selfish landscaping choices. She decided to plant a few lilacs, a magnolia tree and two arborvitae directly on the property line. Twenty years later, the trees she planted grew up to be huge, and they and my own lilacs have limited my already limited space and sunshine. In order for my lilacs to get some sun, they had to grow even taller to compete with the neighbor’s lilacs for sun.

As a result, grass just will not grow in that area. I’ve tried and tried, but even dense shade grass seed does almost nothing.

I finally decided to put in a walkway. Jeff and I went to Home Depot, and I chose a number of large concrete stepping stones. While we were shopping, I struck up a conversation with a young man who was working at Home Depot for the summer. As he created a very nice pattern with the pavers he was loading onto a palette, I said, “Gee, I wish you could do that for me.” He said, “maybe I could.” We exchanged mobile numbers for texting, and he and his buddy came over to see my yard. They had worked for a landscaper who does hardscaping last summer, and they learned quite a bit. They suggested that I put in pavers and gravel to surround the stepping stones. Sounded right to me, so I bought the additional materials. They put in the pavers and stepping stones in a curvy pathway, and they showed me how to put in the gravel, a two to one mixture of bluestone and marble chips. I tried to remove the bits of grass in the areas in the area I did before I put down the rest of the chips. I think it looks better than I expected.

Now, my next project in that area is to trim the lilacs and add mulch underneath them.

New Fire Pit Sitting Area

Jeff kept mentioning that we had abandoned the Solo Stove that I bought during the pandemic. We would light the Solo Stove in November, January, and February nights and invite friends to sit outside around the fire pit on freezing winter nights. Since then, we hadn’t used it.

When we were at Home Depot, I suggested getting four large concrete square pieces to put on the ground for the Solo Stove. I decided to place the square stones in the upper yard near the new bench. I brought up two of my blue Adirondack chairs to create an expanded seating area.

We used the Solo Stove just the other weekend. Yay!

Revised Slate Walkway Area

Last summer when I was replanting the lawn, I decided to put in a bunch of small slate tiles as a walkway from the driveway to the backyard. I did a so-so job in spite of trying hard.

In the meantime, I picked up several larger pieces of slate from someone in the Buy Nothing group. The larger slate made much more sense. I managed to interest Jeff in trying to install them. He’s making great progress on the job.

When we were at Home Depot, I noticed they were selling pieces of sod for $10 each. I ended up buying 5 pieces to try on either side of the slate where I couldn’t get grass to reliably grow.

Up till today, the sod was doing well. Jeff suggested that I mow the new pieces of lawn, and I screwed it up with the lawn mower set too low. I will be very sad if I have to rebuy more sod.

Now the dicey part is trying to get grass to grown in between the pieces of slate to anchor them.

The Rest of the Backyard

Although there’s not much backyard left, I haven’t done too much with it. In the long perennial border along the back of the house, I ripped out the huge Japanese anemones that were so invasive they took over everything and were way too big. Although the anemones are trying to grow back and I keep ripping them out, I was able to plant a lot of new perennials.

One night last week, I took the wire cloches off the two small rose bushes I bought because the few buds were growing through the wire. And wouldn’t you know, a rabbit (most likely) ate the little plants. Ugh. Fortunately, my other larger roses are in bloom or getting ready to bloom.

Most of my perennials aren’t in bloom yet. I hope the Bee Balm and Red and Blue Cardinal flowers will bloom soon so the hummingbirds will have something to eat (click on link below for last years hummingbird in the bee balm). I love watching them!

https://youtube.com/shorts/Ao9ePd50ivs?feature=share

Finally, I have a number of plants in hanging baskets and pots throughout the yard.

I have several peony bushes in my yard. My large pink peonies are the oldest, and they bloom first.

Last summer, I bought a tree peony at Costco, and that shrub has already bloomed. I planted it against the house in my perennial garden, but the plant is too big for that space. I will most likely dig it up and move it to a larger space.

Right now, two of my red peony bushes are in full bloom. They are stunning.

Because it is supposed to rain tonight, I decided to pick a lot of them and put them in a vase in the house. I’m happy to have them inside. They are opulent!

And here’s the view from above with my freshly mowed lawn!