The Garden ~ Early Spring 2012

For this first bit of spring, I've been focused on putting the garden in order. As I mentioned last year, I just watched my garden grow ~ other than keeping the weeds out, I didn't do much to maintain order. By August of last year, I realized that this is a garden that need s a bit of wrangling. If I don't watch out, the bee balm will run wild and take over the beds, the sedum and mums will grow tall and and then fall over with the weight of their heavy flowers, the honey suckle will make its trellis buckle {catch that rhyme?}, and the grass with swallow our little stone path.

So what's the plan for this year? Well we began by putting in a little wrought iron fence along the bed with the tallest flowers. My hope is too keep them from overflowing the bed and creating patches of dead grass as shown below:


I'm also armed and ready to do some pinching back this spring. The bee balm, mums, and sedum can all be pinched back before their buds form. This will delay flowering, but it will also create shorter, sturdier stems, which will help everything stand tall. For something like the bee balm, I can also do the pinching in stages in order to purposefully create different flowering times to keep the color in the beds for a longer period of time.

On the other side of the house, rather than try to keep the foliage in the beds, I think it's time to expand the bed by a few inches. So I'll be out there soon pulling up the grass and creating a nice, clean border.



Last weekend I focused on the stone path. As you can see in the photo above, the grass was encroaching. It took about five hours to get this project done, but with my trusty screw driver as a tool {I put it under a grass clumps roots to help me pry it up}, I created about an inch of free space around each stone. It definitely wasn't fun, and my hands were so weak afterwards that I could barely write, but it looks great!


We have a few more beds with messy boarders that need attention, but that will have to wait until the spring weather returns.