Daisy v Mint

In retrospect, planting the oxeye daisy in my garden boxes wasn't my best plan ever.

"Look," I thought. "There's all these pretty daisies growing away so well in our horrible clay soil. I should put a couple in my garden boxes. I'll bet even I couldn't kill them!"

Well, that's the trouble isn't it? Even I couldn't kill them.

And the mint wasn't such a hot idea either.

This pile of mess is from just two of my four by six garden boxes. Mint and oxeye daisy and a good ten pounds of my expensive four-way planting soil!

I'm thinking of adding another box, planting them both and letting them duke it out. It'll be like Celebrity Death Match - Invasive Species Edition!

Except they'll probably get together, put aside their differences and gang up on the other boxes....

I'm just happy to have been able to hobble up to the front and tend to my garden boxes. We build them last summer out of some old fencing we'd gotten off, I think, Craigslist.

They did pretty well this year. This was taken a couple of weeks ago.

We installed a soaker hose before we left for Sturgis and it worked great! The weeds liked it, too, and since I have been laid up, they've gotten totally out of hand.

I spent the better part of two days weeding and weeding and then I weeded some more. I think I'm done for the year but the boxes are going to need some major overhauling in the spring. When we built the boxes, I just planted everything I had from my container garden at my old place just to get them in the ground. Not everything was blooming at the time and I wasn't sure how everything would spread. I figured I'd give them a year to stretch their little roots and see how they looked. I ended up with a lot of purple flowers on plants that spread like crazy.

I want to relocate the mint and daisy, obviously, and spread out the plants so they all have sufficient room. Off to the right, out of the picture, there is room for at least three more boxes. I'm trying to plan the layout for the boxes this time since I know better how the plants will develop. I'd like to showcase the lavenders a little more (my favorites) and give the rosemaries some more room, too (my second favorites). I'd also like to get some reds and whites in the mix as well and maybe some more oranges.

If anyone has suggestions for hardy, red and white and orange perennials, I'd love to hear about them!