February yard photos

Each month I am going to post pictures of my beds. As we all know January and February, our yards don't look there best. All of the beds below are in my back yard. When I moved in 3-1/2 yrs ago there were no flower beds in the back yard...it has been a work in progress....as gardening always is. This bed is 85% shade...so I have several hostas, a hydrangea, mexican heather and a few other shade loving plants in there. I want to add some good plants to it this year. The car tags on the fence came off of both of my grandfathers old trucks.

I enlarged this bed over the weekend. It was a rectangle. You can see my mess all over the ground! A few plants in this bed are: Clematis, daylilies, amaryllis, iris, daffodils, bee balm, sweet william, & hydrangea.

This bed is the newest of them all, and it is HUGE! I created this bed in September. I am proud to say that EVERY plant in this bed (with the exception of the blueberry bush from Petals, and a climbing rose) was either an heirloom bulb I found, a plant I divided from existing plants, or was given to me by someone. I am so excited about the plants in this bed blooming. I have big plans for it. I have saved seeds from all of my zinnias, coneflowers, & black eyed susans and I plan on planting them in this bed in the Spring. I also purchased Dinner Plate Dahlias in pink and purple to go in this bed. I planted a white climbing rose to cover the arbor. The stepping stones are actually 12" x 12" mosaic tiles. They were left overs from my moms house. I am not going to out any mulch in this bed so I can freely sow seeds in it without any problems. A few of the plants in this bed (starting from the back next to the house): butterfly ginger, mexican petunia, irises (not sure what colors yet....found them at various places), crocosmia, crinnum lily (again not sure what color, they came from hunting camp), amaryllis, daffodils, old chrysanthemums (from my grandma), bee balm, to name a few. The kettle hanging up was my grandmothers....it is not going to stay there...I am going to make a planter out of it...it is just hanging out there for now.

This bed was the 3rd bed I created in the yard. It is in front of an old playhouse. I have plans to tear it down this summer and tie this bed into the one pictured below. The wall art is actually from a friends old door in Blacklawn. It was on his original screen door. He was going to trash it, until I saved it!

Here is a shot of both beds This bed was created last summer....it was a royal pain. It was all monkey grass...every square inch. It was so thick that I could literally stand on my shovel and not penetrate through it. It had to be tilled up and it took about 2 weekends to haul off all the monkey grass. The iron trellis came from Sun Daisy...which has to be my favorite gardening store besides Petals From the Past. A few plants in this bed: Jacobean plant, Mona Lavender, & Bat Face Plant

This one is tricky....there are alot of roots from the oaks, so I am going to start adding in containers to fill in gaps. There are alot of plants in this bed...all of them currently dormant. To mention a few: gardenias, lantana, phlox, tibouchina, red jasmine, purple salvia, coneflowers, coreopsis, gloriosa lily, and many more.