Capturing Your Garden: In the Ground

Whether you have shrubs, bulbs, plants, annuals and/or perennials, chances are that some things are doing well and others are not so much. Taking pictures throughout the season will help when planning for the following year.

Our rock garden has been a work-in-progress since the day we moved in. Okay, the day we moved in it was a huge area covered with wild blackberry vines and was quite scary. What was scarier was when we were cleaning it out and found that the previous owners apparently used this part of the backyard to dump their garbage and they were kind enough to put it all into black plastic bags so as to more than likely not draw any suspicion from the neighbors.

We have gutted and replanted this particular part of the yard completely four times, the last being about six years ago and I am quite pleased with most of it. Yes, there are a few small areas that need some new plants to replace the dead ones, but overall the design is much more pleasing and the varying height makes it an interesting area to gaze upon while seated on the deck. And yes, there are a ton of weeds that need to be pulled, as is quite obvious in the pictures.

The irises we have planted along the entire length of the North fence from the street to the end of the rock garden has also been quite the interesting experience. We first planted a few along the wall above the rock garden during our initial clean up and planting and have been dividing and gifting the rhizomes ever since. As you can see, the rock garden is mostly yellow, not by choice, but because I must have accidentally divided and gifted and replanted along the rest of the fence the white and purple irises. It is time to divide and conquer this year a couple weeks after they are finished blooming, so I plan to redistribute them to better integrate the colors.

From the street side, there are very obvious groupings of irises, a couple varieties of purples and whites and a group of yellows. Actually, this was initially two darker purples with yellow throats, five whites, ten light purples and three yellows. Only one of the yellows took and about half of the light purples didn’t take either, and after a few years they have nearly filled in the wall. However, as you can see in the pictures there are some empty spots that need to be filled in and will be when I divide them all.

In the front yard under the eaves, not much is able to grow. It gets shade most of the day except for late afternoon sun, aka the hottest time of the day, so these plants have to be able to withstand those conditions. Trial and error has taught us that not much can and we just have to replant often. However, a few years ago when we were going to be hosting Easter at our house, we planted quite a few things under there and to this day they are all still alive. Some aren’t doing so well and should have been dug up and put out of their misery, but for the most part we have had a little success… as long as we remember to water at least once a week during the spring and fall, every day during the summer and every other week during the winter since this area receives no rain being completely covered, they do fine. However, in the picture you can see there are some areas not doing so well and probably need some fertilizer, more water or both.