PLANNING ANOTHER BAY WINDOW GARDEN REVAMP
When you can plant, you plan right?! I’ve been practicing my garden design graphic and drawing skills this winter and I took the opportunity to create a new plan for my bay window garden bed. This bed was revamped last year, but the heucheras slowly fizzled out throughout the season. We’ll see if they try to come back this spring but I don’t have a lot of hope. So, onwards and upwards!
The plan:
First, I’ll remove the existing heucheras, hostas, and grasses from the center of the bed. Any that are salvageable will find a new home elsewhere in my garden. The mountain laurels and green mountain boxwood are doing well so they get to stay. I’ll replace the perennials with two astilbe varieties and lamium groundcover.
Why astilbe and lamium?
Astilble is supposedly deer resistant, but we’ll see how well that holds up with my local deer. The two varieties that caught my eye are a dark pink Montgomery and a white Chantilly Lace, which should provide me with some pops of color in this shady area in early-to-mid summer. Also, I picked plants that are available to purchase online and have shipped to my home since I’m not sure I’ve seen these locally. Here is a picture of the Chantilly Lace variety from the Proven Winner’s website.
The lamium I added to a nearby bed last year has done very well. It’s evergreen-ish and has cute purple flowers in the spring. The icy silver/green foliage should pop nicely against the darker greens of the astilbe. Also, the deer haven’t touched in the last year so that’s a huge win in my book.
Overall this should be an easy revamp and I’m excited to try out a new plant in my garden - aka I’m crossing my fingers the deer don’t eat the astilbe. I think I need to give up entirely on hostas because the deer are drawn to them too much. Farewell you easy, shade-tolerant plants! I will miss you in my backyard. Perhaps another place will suit you better. But until then, I bid you adieu.
If any of you have had heucheras that act more like annuals than perennials, please let me know I’m not alone! I’m not sure if this area was too wet or perhaps the soil wasn’t rich enough. There was previously landscape fabric in this bed so the soil hasn’t had the years of good, organic matter (mulch, leaves, etc) added to it like the rest of my garden has.