Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Better than nothing

So I was off yesterday, and bored, and the weather was awful - hailing and sleeting, grey, cold. What is with the ice? I need my spring weather! So I decided to get some plants for my completely not done and really weedy front yard. I went to two nurseries to find what I was looking for. All of the plants I purchased I have read about, and have wanted, but I didn't go to the nursery looking for them and thinking I would buy them. I just saw them there, and started arranging foliage and colors in my cart.

The first nursery had awful plants. Everything I picked up was so root bound - where the roots are circling around and are all tangled in the pots. You want strong roots, not showy blooms when you are shopping for plants. Look at the bottoms!

The next place had nicer plants, but a small selection. Of the actual plants I went to the nursery to find, I purchased zero. I was looking for some lovely shade plants for the southern side of my back garden, but they had nada! I think I am going to have to purchase the plants I want online, which makes me nervous because I have never done so.

This first picture shows my mismatched yard. You can see why I had to do something, anything. It is full of weeds and some beautiful bulbs. But the bulbs will soon sink back beneath the earth to conserve energy until next spring. Then they will emerge after you've long forgotten how wonderfully fragrant the hyacinths are. Now that I've started with my plant decoration, I can't stop. It looks too silly with half of it bark mulched and weeded like that.



I am already thinking about moving them around a bit. I want to get more of the purple fluffy stuff (heuchera 'silver scrolls' aka coral bells) and putting it closer to the sidewalk. I would move the feathery grey-green stuff (artemisia 'powis castle') back, since it grows to 3 ft. The heuchera only gets about 18" high, so it would look better in front of the taller artemisia.



Of course, they're tiny and far apart right now, but believe me, both of those plants have quite a spread. That's why all the teeny viola plants are tucked in between them. They'll peter out by late summer, then come back from self-seeding through the fall to the spring. Although listed as an annual (grows from seed, flowers, sets seed, and dies in one year), it reliably comes back in the entrance garden. And the weather here is pretty mild, so I have flowers from it almost year round with absolutely no care, just rainwater and sunshine.