Gardening & Landscaping in Northern Michigan: Extending the second bed

All photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

This bed is really a continuation of the one along the sidewalk up to the house.
I wanted something to attract bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. It is working as I have all three of them in abundance.

To keep the adjoining bed flowing I made the same mound with sloping sides and planted the same plants in the same order. outer edge = perennial seed from a box. outer = corepsis, sage, firewitch, & delphinium. middle = blanket flower & hosta. inner edge = low lying.

At the entrance to this bed I dug two 4' x 10" x 3' trench's and filled them with chert. I'm thinking this will let any oils or whatever would kill plants drain off the sidewalk & into the ground before it hits the bed. Actually I don't know why I did it. What the hell kind of oils are coming off my sidewalk & gonna kill my plants. Anyways it looks good.

A friend ripped her porch down so I ended up with a dump truck load of red brick and busted cement in the front yard. I was going to use it as fill in the back but with my trusty rock hammer from the 70's the cement flaked off the bricks quite easily. I put down a brick pad going into the bed and another one going out to the lawn. (well soon you will see the one going to the lawn).

Wow, I'm looking at these photos & realize I should have done a clean up before taken pics. There is some of her cement around that tree and a large pile way out in the background. I'll get to that later. It makes me sick every time I look at these arborvitae globes. They were real nice before the deer chowed them. I'll hold off on replacing them to see if they come back but I got a feeling these are going to get transplanted in the back some where.

Usually I don't like the look of broken cement. I was going to use it for fill in the back. I made it as far as this tree, butted up a yard rake against the tree and rotated it around the tree to get my radius while laying the chunks of cement. Funny how a really hot day can change your work load. It was a lot easier than humping it all the way to the backyard. I need to figure out what to fill it with. I know the outer edge will get something that flows downward to hide the cement.

My friend owns a wine shop and was throwing out this bike wine display. It has a bunch of baskets on it to hold the wine. I need to find planters for the baskets, paint it a wild color & throw it up on the bed with vibrant colored plants and vines covering the frame. This will be the only annuals I will have on the property. The bed is pretty high but when I lay wood chips and bring in 7 inchs of topsoil for the lawn it will be the right height.

Entering the bed, the left side continues the same as along the sidewalk up to the house.

It ends short where I made a big mound for a weeping cherry tree under planted with wooly veronica stepables. The outer edge along the whole bed has that boxed seed mentioned earlier. I switched to foxglove and delphinium mixed with firewitch and corepsis continuing around the outer curve.

Delphinium (magic fountains) They already bloomed and I collected the seeds but after I whacked it down it is coming back for a second bloom. GOOD.

Foxglove (Camelot Lavender) They bloomed also and the seeds were taken.

And I can't forget my hummingbird feeders I picked up while in Italy. They are kind of neat. They have the regular feeders along the top that is a separate bowl inside to hold the liquid and the big opening lower towards the bottom holds seed. Unless I missed the boat and that hole is for something else. I was wondering why a seed feeder on a hummingbird feeder. Oh well it looks good. I have four of them throughout the yard.

The center consist of stepping pads made from the brick of my friends porch. I have to break out my rock saw to trim the end pieces of the platform along with the blocks that I used for the border edging of this bed.

The walkway is filled with another neat stepable called sedum purple form. It is growing slower than I thought it would. This will fill in like the wooly veronica around the weeping cherry and feel good on the bare feet. You can't see it but there are about 100 or so pieces of the plant in between the bigger ones you see. I took a couple plants and pulled apart each stem and spaced them all over to get it to fill in quicker.

At the end of the path I put in three butterfly bush's.

One pink delight that blooms duh! pink.

One nanho purple compact. I think this one was mislabeled. It doesn't look like the picture on the tag.

And one called assorted. It is an assortment of spikes that should bloom white, pink, a dark purple and red. I think I got robbed on this one. It has not bloomed yet but I got a feeling.

On the right side of this bed closest to the house I continued on with the privet at the end of a boxwood hedge same as the sidewalk in front of the house.

In front of that I made a big mound in a triangular shape, covered it in fabric & rocks.

I still need to fill this in but I put a lemon coral sedum at each point. Towards one point I put hens & chicks green and red. On the other point I have a little alpine strawberry a friend gave me.

A lady was throwing this pedestal away. I asked her what she had on top of it. She replied that she had kept it for so long and could never find the right top for it. I told her I would. I have had it for two months now and I cannot find the right top. I want a bird bath. I have looked everywhere and nothing clicks. Terra won't work. The urn type won't either. I cannot find the right thing that clicks in my head. I was thinking a slim hammered copper bath. I don't know maybe I will end up winging it down the road. I thought if I hung on to it I would know the right thing when it came along. Friggen snows gonna be flying by the time I do.