There’s a couple garden things I haven’t shown you yet.

In addition to creating Edible Alley and the perennial beds around it, as well as the new walkway garden out front and the expanded fence garden in the back, I added two other gardens.

The first was up the driveway side of the house.

Between the house and the walkway/driveway, there was a narrow strip of bare dirt. Why they didn’t pour the concrete all the way to the house, I have no idea. I add it with the many other WTF decisions they made with this house. I don’t think they used it as a garden, it doesn’t get much sun. If they did… whatever they planted there was long gone and all it did was grow weeds. Which I had to keep under control.

I don’t mind mowing the lawn, but I HATE weed whacking. I do it as little as possible, so anything I can do to lessen the amount I have to weedwhack, the better. So I planted it up!

As I said, it doesn’t get much sun. Maybe an hour or two in the morning. So I’ve got to focus on shade-loving plants.

I love Heuchera, and they come in a great range of colours. They will also get tall spires of little bell-shaped flowers.

To compliment them, I added some Coleus, which also had beautiful coloured leaves.

Some begonias and some violas. There’s a few colours of violas, but those are the only ones blooming at the moment. I also planted a few impatiens, but they aren’t blooming yet either.

Only the Heuchera and Violas will come back next year… and I hope to find some other shade-loving perennials to throw into the mix. And eventually it will become self-sustaining like the other gardens.

The other garden required more dreaded sod removal… made harder by the lack of rain! So it’s a small garden for now.

It’s on the opposite side of the front yard, almost at the property line. Last year, I planted a butterfly bush there. I thought it would be a great place for the new lilac (Tinkerbelle) and the blue Rose of sharon I bought. I filled the areas in between the shrubs with some sage, coneflower, penstamon, and blanket flower (all split from plants in the other gardens.). And on the end, I added a beautiful new rose called Caroline de Monaco. It’s almost ready to bloom and when it does it will be a creamy white.

And I think that’s it for the gardens I’m going to add… this year!