My Garden

Early this spring I began working on what would become my garden.  I've coveted a garden for years, most likely a throw-back to when I was a kid and we tried growing things in the icky Virginia red clay in the backyard.  When I lived in Billings in my little house, I attempted gardening and was marginally successful, until I moved to Bozeman and had to leave everything behind.  In Bozeman, gardening consisted of some planters outside my apartment.

Fast forward to now.  There was a small area in the backyard which looked like, at some point in the past, a flower bed or garden.  However, it was covered in weeds and in desperate need of some TLC.

Enter Erin!  With Jim's help, I removed all the wall stones, which were crooked, tilted, and no longer any semblance to level, from the garden area.  I then re-dug the wall footing, leveled the trench, and began resetting the wall stones.  Once I was finished with the wall, I mixed some humus, lime, mulch, and organic garden soil in with the existing clayey mix which was already in the garden.  The guy at Lowe's was the one who suggested lime - supposedly it should help break down the clay particles and make the soil less clayey.  (Which I think it actually did!)

garden right after planting

In my garden I planted a variety of herbs and perennials - I hate the thought of spending money on annuals, only to have them die, so the majority of my plants are perennials.  The herbs I have are: lavender, rosemary, parsley, chamomile, sage, basil, a really cool purple basil, lemon balm (stolen from the front yard!), thyme, and dill.  To these I added some flowers: dahlias, some yellow daisy-like flowers, forget-me-nots, wild columbine, and some portulacas.  I also planted some really cool plants called Stepables - they're a variety of plants which can be stepped on and not hurt.  As a last addition, we had an extra cherry tomato plant without a home, so I decided to drop it into a corner of the garden just in case it would take.

some of the annuals - I can't remember their name, I just call them the fuzzy flowers - they gave an awesome punch of color when everything was planted

dehlias (yellow) with the lavender and rosemary in the corner

up close of my yellow dehlia

portulaca flower

tomatoes!

red dehlia - this plant is really pretty

purple basil, started from seeds

not sure what the name of this is, but it's similar to a black-eyed susan, and is one of my favs in my garden

lavender (not started from seeds!)

rosemary

I added a soaker hose, some pretty plant identifiers (some of my herbs were seedlings and I had a hard time telling what was what!), and you have yourself a garden!

the flowers from one of the stepables plants

garden view a few weeks after planting - growing!

My large scale intent is to add a second tier to my garden area and have stepables drop down the stones, but the second tier is currently on hold until I get a combination of the energy and the time for the effort!