Well hello there strangers :)
My husband has been gone for 3 weeks and he will be home Saturday and a project on our list is to do a flower garden.
The thing is, I'm scared. I can't keep anything alive.
And while I can only dream it would look something hearty and beautiful like this...
In all reality it could end up like this...
So anyone out there with a green thumb want to chime in?
I'm thinking of going along a portion of our fence like this...
I would love to plant some veggies or something too but our yard is just really not that big and I'm not sure how much usable space I want to take up with a garden. And really, don't flowers only bloom in the spring/summer? Would I have a big dead dirt patch other times of year? Help!
One other project we want to do that will take up more yard space is to deck over our completely crappy concrete slab. We paid extra to get 10x19 but it is sooooo rough that walking on it barefoot is pretty much not the way to go...as well as the rug I have out there never can get dry. We want to raise it up and do a pergola like this (minus the hot tub and fancy rail things) and do a semi circle around one end for our firepit. And obviously not this fancy, but I think you get my drift.
Just overall wanting to improve our outdoor space so we can go out and enjoy more than we currently are.
What plans do you have to spruce up your yard this year?
i would love to pick up my lot and put it somewhere else :) my back yard isn't terribly private and i knew that buying the lot. however, i didn't think it would bother me as much as it does now. i tried my best to plant some annuals, they aren't dead yet. (yayyyy). but that's out front. i'm a little lost for the back yard and around the deck.
ReplyDeleteAsia,Im with you. I feel like we are on display in our back yard. I cant buy bushes large enough to fill the space. LOL. what were we thinking??? I guess with a new plan you dont have mature trees and bushes in peoples yards, it feel so bare back there, even though I am a planting fool, its still not enough. Sigh :(
DeleteGood luck with the landscaping! We planted a bunch of flowers in our front flower bed and they all ended up dying. Anything we bought for full sun got too much shade and anything we bought for partial sun/shade seemed to get too much sun. I'm not sure how that works, but I'm not going through the hassle again this year. I'm hoping we will be able to get a landscaping company to do some work out front next year... retaining wall for the flower bed, plants that won't die, etc. Struggling to grow grass is proving to be enough work for us this year anyway.
ReplyDeleteIf you are interested in a garden, but are limited on space I HIGHLY suggest you look up square foot gardening. There's a very informative book on the subject written by Mel Bartholomew (http://www.melbartholomew.com/) that really helped us get started and we'd never had a garden before. You'd be surprised by how much you can grow in just a four foot by four foot square. If you divide your square into one foot squares, hence square foot gardening, you could plant 16 different crops in just a 4 foot by 4 foot garden. And with many crops you can plant more than one plant per square.
We had a 4 foot by 8 foot raised garden bed that is 12 inches deep last year and we got a ton of food from it. We actually expanded it this year with a second 4 foot by 8 foot bed. There are some pictures in this post that will show you just how much you can grow in a small area... http://florencewithryanhomes.blogspot.com/2013/06/lawn-update-garden-and-deck-view.html
M, sorry all your stuff dies. I HAVE a green thumb so I can get anything to grow, but I know what to buy and where to put it. M years of trial and error. LOL.
ReplyDeleteIn the one pic you have tiger lillies. they look OK at first but dont bloom all year and tend to look very tall and sparsh I love spikes, but try and get ones that will come back every year that way you only have to plant once.
I could go on and on, but just go get some stuff and give it a try. Its the only real way to get a feel for it.
Oh, also in our new homes, I would pick things that have a med. to fast growth, if you do slow growing, it may be 10 years before it looks good :)
I'm laughing but not laughing because it's really funny lol...all my stuff dies too. I somehow managed to kill palm plants in two weeks :-/ and :-( i'm almost ready to just get a landscaper, there are no green thumbs to be had by me.
ReplyDeleteHaha... we have killed 2 palm plants already and we just bought a third! We'll never learn!
DeleteThat first picture is so beautiful! What I would give to have a flower garden like that!! You are right that the flowers only bloom in the spring/summer and then they look pretty crappy the rest of the year. I have been trying to mix in some evergreen shrubs, which stay green all year, in with our flowers so it doesn't look so bad. The perennials we have are daisies, irises, some decorative grasses and some rose bushes. The grasses and rose bushes are pretty hardy. We lost a lot of the daisies over the winter and the irises are still doing ok. Landscaping is a struggle for me too, but I want to try to spruce it up this year!
ReplyDelete