I have been wanting to do a garden post for the longest, considering gardening is my biggest obsession in life, but I just haven’t had the heart, not with the fact that we’re moving in a few weeks. It just doesn’t seem worth the time and energy when the garden is going to completely change at a new house.
Then I woke up this morning, spent some time in the garden doing this and that, and decided that maybe, just maybe, I was going to do that first garden post. Not of the entire garden, but just of the front garden.
We are renting, so our plants (over 300) are all in pots. One of the things that we especially “hated” about the house we are currently renting are the bushes in front of the dining room window. They had not been cared for, were half dead when we moved in, and though they are growing back beautifully now (we cut them back and have fertilizing them, have spent the last year trying to convince them to grow a little more uniformally), they’re not to the point where they add any street appeal. In fact, without something there (and without the other pots we’ve added), the house looks quite drab.
We chose to put all of our ferns there, in front of the bushes, giving green to the front of the house while allowing the bushes behind time to grow back.
The last two mornings have involved repotting all of those ferns, as they all were getting too big for their containers. Hard work, but well worth it in the end.
It doesn’t really seem like a lot there, but these are what they looked like before we moved them out there (from our back work area):
To the right of all that is our “St Francis area.”
The larger of the two is really thriving out there in this position, and flowered quite nicely. It usually remains dormant for a few weeks, then comes back full of blooms. (I need to get out there and groom it a little, as well as tie some of it to the fan trellis behind it.)
The smaller one to the right has had some issues, so we’re hoping that being out there in this location will really give it some time to grow (and so far it has been working). The interesting thing about gardening is: it doesn’t matter how much you research and learn, things are still all about trial and error.
This is all in an area between the garage (on the right) and the front entry (on the left).
When we moved in, there wasn’t much color, so we quickly added color with our pots and flowering plants at the front entry.
One of the things I am most happy about when it comes to my front garden is actually the side garden. The sides of houses are always so boring, with nothing really there except for hoses and electrical boxes. We decided to add some plants down the side to add some color and life down the side.
I’ve liked this house, despite issues it has and issues with the owners, but I’m also excited to see where we will be next, and the way the garden will unfold there.
Beautiful Screamer 