It's Finished!!!

(I'm doing it again...reposting! To be honest, I posted this earlier this month when I thought maybe we weren't going to do the Before/After thing at BooMama's and I just couldn't wait any longer. Shows you how far lack of patience gets you! So...want to see more Before and After? Go to BooMama's and check out what everyone else has done!)



I've been dying to show you the flower garden I worked on this year, so here it is! Enjoy the before, middle, and after pictures!



Here is before...taken a year ago May. We moved into this house 3 years ago and this is pretty much what it looked like, minus the bike:

Not that I have anything against rock gardens, but with the loooooong Montana winters I decided I needed something with some POW! I needed bright colors and lots of 'em during our short summer.

So we got rid of the rock. It was a full family event and the kids loved it. Loved. No, actually they hated it, but they do love the results now and beg me to let them water it.

We took out the weed paper, broke up the dirt, added compost, put on new weed paper, and topped it with soil pep:

And....voila! Three months later all these wonderful flowers magically appeared!

Ok...not quite. I actually did a lot of research on what flowers grow well here and what color scheme I wanted and what height the plants would be and where to put them. Because I like to throw caution to the wind like that.

But what I finally decided was to go with red, yellow and purple. I wanted a mostly perennial garden. I like it when they come back. And I'm not into high maintenance. But the front row are all annuals so I can change them out each year and get a different look if I want.

Here's another shot at the before...

And this was taken the end of July, after they'd been in the ground over a month...

It's amazing how much they grew since then! This is what we have now and I absolutely LOVE it! It was a lot of work in the beginning. A lot. But it's been so fun since then. It's like therapy.

My Therapy Garden.

So here is what you see when you walk up to our front door:

Now for some details...

These are some of the plants I grew from seed (the only ones that made it, I'm embarrassed to say). Salvia and Black-eyed Susan. It's fun to see them now, but I probably wont go from seed any next year.

Here are the columbine. I was worried for a while that they wouldn't make it, but they hung in there.

Here are the Prairie Sun Rudbeckia. Some of these got almost as big as my hand, fingers spread out!

I planted day lilies and they are some of my favorites. I planted purple and yellow and next year I'll get red, too.

Now these are my very favorite! Blanket flower. The bees love 'em too. Hey, as long as they don't love me, I'm good.


Here are some close-ups of the whole garden. The salvia were in between blooms so they aren't as bright in these pictures. And you can barely see the coral bells in the back...they were disappointing, but maybe they'll bloom next year.

Of course I'm already planning for next year. I want to transplant some of these into another bed I'm preparing. This fall I'm also planting more bulbs in the back...purple iris and some gladiolus (red, purple, and yellow of course). There are a few other types of plants I need to get to finish it off. I already cant wait for spring!

I know you're not as excited about all this as I am. It's just so wonderful that they turned out ok, considering I had no idea what I was doing...and that I've managed to kill every single house plant I've ever had. Every. One. Not to mention the plethora of grasshoppers. It was like the plague!