Flower Garden

Since our vegetable garden is only limping along, I thought I'd post an update on our flower garden which is doing a little better.

We built a new row of boxes this year and transplanted some perennials from the older boxes - lavender and rosemary and a couple of ground covers. For the most part, those are doing well. One of the rosemary plants was struggling and getting a little leggy but it seems to be recovering slowly.

Over the years, I have collected a pretty good stash of seeds but they were getting old and not doing me any good sitting in my closet. So in April, as an experiment, I tossed a bunch of seeds into all the boxes to see what would happen. Quite a lot it turns out:

The poppy seeds that my mom sent me several years ago were apparently still quite viable (this was after I thinned them about three times.)

The baby's breath turned out to be a good contrast to the lavender.

And I finally got some bachelor's buttons growing, one of my favorites.

I'm going to have do some transplanting and reorganizing of first box though, since I didn't plan for their height and they obscure the lavender somewhat (the foreground of the first photo). I'll probably move the lavender to the end of the box and let the bachelor's buttons fill the center.

Actually, I'm going to have to do some reorganizing all over, I think. Scattering seeds around the boxes was interesting but some of the colors don't necessarily complement each other. The bachelor's buttons and blanket flowers clash

and I definitely have way too much purple - lavender and campanula, mint and lamb's ear (aka goat's ear), even the bachelor's buttons tend to shades of purple. I'm happy that something is growing but still....

I'd like to have some more red flowers. Right now really all I have is one cinquefoil which has lovely dark blood-red flowers. I'd like to find out the best way to propagate it and start a few more.

The poppies from my mom were mixed but I did get a few red ones which I've marked for later seed collection. My friend Alix suggested Flanders poppies, too.

I'm also getting a better idea of the flowering cycles and would like to replant to have constant color in my boxes. The poppies and columbine were early, then bachelors buttons and lavender and, currently, the cinquefoil and blanket flowers are both coming on.

I'd like to get bulbs in, too, for early color. For Valentine's Day this year, JD gave me two pots of red and orange tulips as well as a hyacinth which I've transplanted into the triangle bed in the middle of the driveway. We have a few more miscellaneous bulbs scattered around the property but I'll have to hunt for them a bit since they've died back.