The hardest part is figuring out what's going to be bloom when, and what the bed will look like when things aren't in bloom. These pictures are my best approximation. It'll be interesting to see how close they come to reality.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
My first garden bed plan.
I'm hoping this plan will give me something blooming at all times in the raised bed I like to call the "eye" because of its shape. Daffodils, followed by oriental poppies flanked by dwarf glads, leading into dianthus and cornflower, then aster and sedum. The first bed is in the ground. I guessed about the sun/shade balance here. I didn't try to track the sun's patterns for a few months, and I'm not at all clear how the spring angle of the sun will play out in my garden. I think the "eye" will be full sun.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Daffodils in Abundance
I don't want to try to do too much at first. Not only will I be creating this garden ... I'm going to have to be maintaining it as well. Nobody with my health history or weak back could take that for granted. So this first year I've decided to create one small raised bed and a daffodil patch.
I ordered a half bucket of a daffodil mix ... and the bulbs arrived but they were all a single variety, and bigger than I wanted. They arranged to swap that bucket with the mix I'd ordered. When the new bucket came, once again they were the larger, single daffodil bulbs. This time when I called they put me through to the supervisor, who wanted to find out what happened. He had me read off certain codes from the sides of the buckets. We discovered that the buckets were coded with the preferred mix, and that the larger bins in their warehouse where the buckets were filled prior to shipping was full of the wrong kind of daffodils. How many other people were getting the wrong bulbs and just TAKING IT? This time they got it right and told me to keep both buckets. I'm not sure I CAN plant a full bucket of daffodil bulbs in the remaining weeks ... but I'll try.
I hope the daffodils will naturalize. There'll be a largish 6ft x 6ft patch in the far NW corner of the yard. I think that spot will get early morning sun in the very early spring so it will warm up quicker than other spots. I'm using mostly mid-size daffodils there. I'm putting larger daffodils all of the same variety along the driveway. So I need to lift up the grass in a 36sqft area and plant a half bucket of bulbs there, and weed a 2ft x 8ft patch along the driveway to plant another half bucket of bulbs.
All that and build a small stone wall around a raised bed about 5ft x 3ft.
The raised bed will have something blooming most every week of the summer, but I'm not at all sure how balanced it will look as the weeks go by. The naturalizing daffodil patch will be filled with white and yellow daffodils of various sorts and will sprout early in one of the first patches of ground to warm up in the spring. A lovely patch seen off in the distance from both the deck and the bedroom. The other patch will be a strip of bright yellow along the gravel driveway, blooming a little later than the other patch, but not by much. At least that's the plan.
I ordered a half bucket of a daffodil mix ... and the bulbs arrived but they were all a single variety, and bigger than I wanted. They arranged to swap that bucket with the mix I'd ordered. When the new bucket came, once again they were the larger, single daffodil bulbs. This time when I called they put me through to the supervisor, who wanted to find out what happened. He had me read off certain codes from the sides of the buckets. We discovered that the buckets were coded with the preferred mix, and that the larger bins in their warehouse where the buckets were filled prior to shipping was full of the wrong kind of daffodils. How many other people were getting the wrong bulbs and just TAKING IT? This time they got it right and told me to keep both buckets. I'm not sure I CAN plant a full bucket of daffodil bulbs in the remaining weeks ... but I'll try.
I hope the daffodils will naturalize. There'll be a largish 6ft x 6ft patch in the far NW corner of the yard. I think that spot will get early morning sun in the very early spring so it will warm up quicker than other spots. I'm using mostly mid-size daffodils there. I'm putting larger daffodils all of the same variety along the driveway. So I need to lift up the grass in a 36sqft area and plant a half bucket of bulbs there, and weed a 2ft x 8ft patch along the driveway to plant another half bucket of bulbs.
All that and build a small stone wall around a raised bed about 5ft x 3ft.
The raised bed will have something blooming most every week of the summer, but I'm not at all sure how balanced it will look as the weeks go by. The naturalizing daffodil patch will be filled with white and yellow daffodils of various sorts and will sprout early in one of the first patches of ground to warm up in the spring. A lovely patch seen off in the distance from both the deck and the bedroom. The other patch will be a strip of bright yellow along the gravel driveway, blooming a little later than the other patch, but not by much. At least that's the plan.
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