THE EVOLUTION OF A GARDEN BED
I love looking at garden design books, blogs, and social media photos but usually you just get to see the final images. My goal with this blog (“journal”) is to show you the entire process so you can see how long some things take. Below is the timeline of the “dogwood garden” so far, aptly named because of the dogwood that we planted, but not to be confused with the other garden with a dogwood in it 30 feet away … :) Also, apologies that these are not all taken from the same angle but that would have required some planning 2 years ago and ya girl didn’t do that. Anyways…
Our garden bed story begins in April 2019 with the blank slate. This space is next to our patio and I wanted to continue the existing garden bed in front of the arborvitae hedge all the way to the fence and incorporate some sort of path to the gate. The stick in the ground indicated where I wanted the dogwood placed.
Still in April 2019, we got the dogwood delivered and planted (along with a lilac).
By May of 2019, I planted 5 boxwoods around the dogwood along with some catmint, removed the grass, and eventually got some mulch down.
Aaaaand that’s pretty much all I did for two years. 2020 arrived and almost nothing got done in the garden, but here is a picture from November so you can see the dogwood’s fall color.
November 2020
Finally, by March 2021, I had the time, budget, and energy to expand this area to my original dream. I showed you all how we expanded this garden bed in this earlier post, and below is the result of the sod removal. We also replaced our fence.
Nothing had changed in this area since the original planting in 2019. All I did was minor weeding, mulching, and threw some bulbs in the ground in the fall of 2020. The boxwoods are doing great but the catmint doesn’t love our wet soil, so they’re starting to fizzle out. Also, our neighbor had a large tree removed that was partially shading this area in the summer, so that turned this area into a full sun space for a good part of the day.
By May 2021 I popped in a few more perennials and they were starting to wake up. Sedum, veronica, gaura, rudbeckia, lavender, coreopsis, and three hydrangea transplants made the cut.
Here are things a few weeks later, still in May 2021.
June 2021: a backed up view of the entire space being filled in with annuals and perennials.
And finally (for this post anyway) here it is in August 2021, full of weeds, blooms, winter interest, fun perennials, and more.
I really love how this space has evolved over the last few years. Things take time but it’s been a lot of fun seeing how plans change, which plants do well in what areas, which plants our deer will munch on or leave alone, and what provides for the best winter interest. It’s ever-evolving and slow-going at times, but it’s 100x more interesting to look at than a patch of grass.
A few things this garden bed, in particular, has taught me:
new trees need supplemental water unless it’s raining (a good, deep soak) at least once a week
making garden beds where grass used to be will mean fighting off grass weeds for a long while. A thick layer of mulch is your friend! (This is the best lesson I’ve learned)
maybe don’t put the tallest plants (gaura) at the front of the bed so you can’t see what’s behind them. However, I love the gaura so much that I think I’m going to fill in all empty spaces with it this coming spring. We’ll see!
More plans for the future:
make a stone border along the patio to keep the mulch in place on those very rainy summer days
more bulbs, because bulbs are fun
and, of course, more plants. More plants = less weeds and less mulch