This is what my future flowerbed looks like; lots of grass and what is going to be a long weekend.
This “little” patch of grass is wedged between the sidewalk and the garage.
Day One: Saturday – We managed to get the sod up by hand and with help of shovels. Please, if you ever hear me talking about making another flowerbed, remind me of this moment and how much it absolutely sucks to dig up grass!
Sunday – Day two. Yep, that’s right … it took us a whole afternoon to get just the grass up, and we were exhausted.
Once all the sod was up, my hubby dug down around the edge and we started on the border. We put down gardener’s cloth below the edging to help keep the weeds out as well. Once the border was cut, leveled, and screwed into place I raked the ground and made it level. We laid down gardener’s cloth over the rest of the newly exposed ground. Then we put a whole truck load of compost on top of the gardener’s cloth to make a nice big flowerbed.
The finished product! We leveled out the compost. The plants I had already patiently waiting for their new home. I placed them where I wanted and then planted accordingly making sure to mix the ground with the compost so that all my plants get plenty of natural fertilizer.
It’s a shady spot, so I chose “tough plants” like hostas that do well in the shade. I plan to throw in a few annuals to bring in some color, but these shown below are all perennials so they’ll come back every year. I finally have a flower garden to put my garden decorations in!
I’m sure I’m getting old and have no business doing hard physical labor when I spend most of my regular days sitting at a desk. I am sore in muscles I didn’t know existed, and my hands are beat up and blistered.
I love my new flowerbed! And thanks to the hubby for working so hard with me this weekend to get it done! This isn’t the only thing we had going on, and so we had to work on it in-between the other weekend activities.
If you have any really cool flower ideas that do great in shady areas, please let me know, as I’m always looking for new ideas!
