Garden Expansion

As much as I love Halloween, I cannot dedicate all of my time to preparing for it. There are things that need to be done. Last weekend, one of those was to expand the front garden. This was the third step in multi-step plan. Since I moved in, I have been slowly building more gardens in the front yard.

This is what the yard looked like in 2009 when I first saw the house.

In the fall of 2010, I built a circular garden bed.

In 2011, I made a rectangular garden bed in front and to the left of that one.

Last fall, I expanded that garden. Boy was my hair short in those days, and I was mean, making my husband dig with a broken toe.

Then, last weekend Douglas and made a third garden bed around the butterfly bush that my mother bought for us this summer.

This is what the yard looked like before we started digging.

Douglas wielded the shovel yet again. This year without the broken toe it was a little easier. Kahlua supervised this time since Crème is not allowed outside.

I went through with a hand shovel taking out the grass and other plants.

Douglas dug a trough in front for our plastic border.

He also removed a very large rock.

I arranged the rocks along the border and planned the layout of the bulbs I had. I planted a peony, tulips, poppies and small border lilies. We will have to wait for spring to see how they turn out.

I also planted some of these plants in the other garden bed and cut out the plants that were starting to turn brown.

Here are the before and after pictures from the day.

I left a space in between the two beds. The plan is for that to become a walkway to the front door. I am going to build an arbor for it for growing grapes. We are taking this project one step at a time.

Happy Homemaking!