My Secret Garden

Our house has a funny little fenced area along the side of the garage up to the master bathroom window.  For years, I have wanted to do something to make this area look pretty. After all, I do have to see it out of the bathroom window EVERY day!   I finally drew up a plan to show my husband and the plan did not involve him having to do much work.  His favorite kind of plan!  Usually my ideas of what "we" need to do involve A LOT of work on his part.

 

 

First, I had to clean out all of the weeds that had taken over the side-yard.  This took quite a bit of sweat, elbow grease, raking the dirt to get it more level, and some help from my adorable little helpers.  Next, a trip to Lowe's with my favorite handy-man!  Getting the stones to border my flower beds was one of the small jobs that I needed some husband help with; he's the one who drives the pick-up after all.  I used a tape measure to measure exactly where I needed to outline the flower beds, using my nifty little graph drawing, and had another helper to set the stones.

 



After setting the stones, I used eight bags of potting soil to fill the beds.  Then I was ready for my plants.  One bed has a Lavender plant, flanked by two Mexican Heather plants. Another has two Rosemary plants.  In the three remaining beds, I planted two each of Peppermint, Marjoram and Spearmint plants.

 

At this point, I had run out of the money that I saved for my project, so I had to wait a couple of months to add the rocks to the path.  During this time, we received an unusual amount of rainfall.  The Marjoram and Spearmint have really thrived, but the rest of the plants were not as happy with all of the rain.  Rosemary, especially, does not need to be so wet! 

 

 

I had one more job that I had to have my husband and his truck help with;  getting a half-yard of river rock to line my pathway.  We were finally able to finish my "Secret Garden" this past weekend.  I added a Basil plant and a Parsley plant to a couple of pots that had previously been home to the last of my Pansies.  It finally got too hot for the Pansies to survive.



I am so happy with how this project turned out and it was exciting to finish a project with very little help from my husband!