New Garden in the Desert

Here is the start of a new Desert Garden! It's kinda sad to start all over again, but at the same time it's fun to pick new plants again.

Here is a pot of plants I picked 2 annuals to give quick color and 1 perennial to grow for next season. I chose a bright green Sweet Potato and a bicolor Angelonia because both grow really fast! I also bought a Guara because it's really drought tolerant and will be nice and overflowing the pot next season.

Here's my pretty red Salvia, it's one of my favorite perennial plants that the hummingbirds love too!

Lastly a pretty pink mini-rose we couldn't resist! And it smells really yummy! We also bought a larger rose but it doesn't have any blooms right now.
Gerard is starting a bunch of seeds too, a ton of Sweet Pea's which it's the perfect time for Sweet Peas any other time of the year and it's too hot for them here! We are so lucky to be able to have some flowers in the winter!

First Big Bloom: May Flowers 2006

5 May 2006

Looking good and starting to bloom.

Everything seems to take off and really start growing faster.

10 May 2006

26 May 2006

I love this view so romantic looking!

As you can see we love the anything goes style that's more like the cottage style garden.

Sunflowers blooming and peaks of hollyhocks getting ready to bloom.

Lots and lots of roses! This is the most roses we have ever owned at one time! Out here the aphids really attack them so we always have to be on the lookout for them. I wonder how the big fancy gardens keep the bugs at bay, anyone know? Do they have a regular spraying routine? This is something that is never mentioned in all the garden magazines and something I always wonder about since the bugs attack our garden so hard that everything would die if we didn't keep on top of it!

Garden Beginnings : April 2006

21 April 2006
Starting to see blooms!

You can see we planted more as well, whenever plants would arrive in the mail we had to add them in.

23 April 2006
Here's a look at the back yard we mostly only use containers in the back. It's fun to get to arrange and re-arrange them for best viewing as the season goes on.
It was fun to sit out back and just enjoy all the color and perfect weather!

27 April 2006
Looking good! More leafing out and more blooms! We started adding mulch too.

Garden Beginnings : Feb. - April 2006

18 February 2006
Garden is ready to be planted.

22 February 2006
A few things planted already.

28 February 2006
More planted and plotted.

12 April 2006
Planted and leafing out!

It's getting there...

Garden Beginnings : Feb. 2006

Since we had to remove a bunch of thick clay we had to replace the vacuum with something! So we ordered top soil and had it put on the driveway. You can see that this photo isn't even the full size of the mound of dirt from the dirt stains on the driveway. In the last post you can see the pile in the side view photo.

Wheel barrel by wheel barrel we filled in the huge garden hole. Some of the neighborhood kids wanted to "help" and they did a little since the wheel barrel got filled up a little faster each trip!

The LAST wheel barrel full!

DONE!
With that part...now to stomp it down mix in some compost and plant everything!

Garden Beginnings: Feb. 2006

Here you can see just how deep the nasty dense clay went! Gerard dug through it to get to the nice sandy soil underneath. This was a HUGE job now! This is now Feb. 2006! We started working more on it since planting time was coming up and bare root roses were going to be arriving soon!

Here is Gerard hard at work! Look at that clay! There was no way anything could grow in that...we had to dig it out if we wanted a nice garden of any kind. We bit off more than we could chew but I think any gardener who's addicted will agree it's worth it in the end.

China and newly adopted Madie are helping out.
Hard work? Nah this is fun!Okay, now I'm tired!

Garden Beginnings: Oct. 2005

Here is a view of the front garden when we first started working on it. We don't really have a good before, this is the earliest photo we have. These photos are dated Oct. 2005 we worked on the garden all winter. It was a big project because there was so much clay to dig out to replace with good soil.

Here is China helping Papa dig! What a good girl!