Free Garden Makeover

It's easy to get frustrated with your garden when you don't have any money to work with but a great way to get around that is to walk through your garden plant catalog in hand and circle the things that you do have. You may be surprised and how expensive some of those plants would be if you had to go out and buy them.

I had a lot of white violas and I was surprised to find out they'd have cost me between 8.95 and 12.95 per plant if I'd had to buy them.

Mixed in with the violas I've got hundreds of lily of the valley plants that I'll be doing another project with.

 
My first plan was to use them in containers with some lily of the valley plants in the center for height and interest.

As I filled one pot after another I realized that there were enough of them to plant as a row along the edge of my path in the front of the garden and make things really look welcoming from the street. We'll see which of these ideas wins with my family. If there's digging to be done I'll have to depend on them for that.

It's a good thing that I didn't have them put in the ground right away. We had a surprise snow a few days later and a stretch of cold weather so I had the pots brought in the house while the flowers bloomed.

Unfortunately by the time I took this last batch of photos I'd already clipped the flowers and put them into my indoor butterfly habitat.

No matter what the weather does I'm having spring in my heart and my home.

As you can see they've grown quite a bit already.

The weather finally warmed up the violets in the yard are in bloom.

The ones in the pots were put in around other pots on the patio.

I planted this urn with a small maple tree at the center and lily of the valley and hosta in the middle then finished it off with the white violets around the outside edge. The reason the urn is sitting on that small table instead of on the side of the covered bench was because we'd painted it from blue to white so that it match the patio furniture and form part of the structure for the container garden.

The lovely thing about this is that it's just the right size to fill a gap between our place and the neighbors and offer a bit of privacy once the plants get bigger.

Garden Photos:,Strawberries, violets, geranium, lilacs

These strawberries are in a tower on the deck floor so they're the ones the critters have been eating as fast as they ripen.

These white violets are in among the lily of the valley under one of my trees and will be given a home of their own soon.

The roof of this little birdhouse is lavender too so it looks really nice with the lilacs. The bush behind it is a white spirea so that will be nice alter in the season. I try to plan things so that there's always a bit of color throughout the season.

I love these daffodils, I sure wish I could remember what variety they were so that I could get some more.

This is the one annual that I bought to put a bit of color into my border after I'd cut and given away the tulips. I made one arrangement for the tea table here and sent the other to my Mother.

Cute, new planter for the deck

What's really funny about this was that it just happened to fit the area I'd painted flowers on. There was no plan. It just worked out.

I planted it with a strawberry and some violets.

Pink Tulips and Ivory Daffodils

This doesn't look like much now other than to roughly mark the area that I want turned into the new flower bed here. They're also handy  for cutting and I resist the urge to bring too many into the house so that I can let guests cut and take fresh flowers home with them.

I'm planning a gravel area with plants and flowers that will run from just in front of the tulips and go back past the pine tree. I'ts going to be a long time before I can afford  to do that but  looking at the flowers here give me hope that it will happen some day.

In the meantime we're all enjoying them, aren't you?

New tulips and lilies along with violets from Grandma make this garden fell wonderful, you can almost feel the generations of love that have gone into it.

Free Garden Decor

 It made me feel really special to feel like the sun was shining just for me this morning. It was great in a lot of ways.

 The family rose from my husbands grandparents farm, his parents farm and everywhere my hubby has lived since. It makes me happy to know that 3 generations have enjoyed it already and we keep sharing it.

 So far it looks like I've only got one Iris this color so I guess I'd better grab my paints and catch it fast.

 I still need to plant the bottom tier of this but I love the way it looks so far and it was all free. I rounded up the hosta and the violets from around the yard and rescued the planter from the dump.

 That fern is making a great comeback since I moved it.

An old poinsettia surrounded by pots of chives and lettuce sitting on the chair one of the neighbors gave me.

Mornings in the garden

I like to go to the garden first thing in the morning when you can hear birds instead of the traffic in the city.
I toss on an old denim dress, grab my coffee and out I go.
Today I was still feeling a bit sulky about not being able to afford all of the plants I see people walking out of the garden centers with (when I 'm just there for a bag of good soil) and then I got over it, grabbed a trowel and wandered around the yard gathering wild violets and filling a basket planter with those.( It's a 3 tier wire stand that I rescued on the way to the dump and found liners for at WalMart)
I also moved a few things around like dragging that stand down next to the arbor and pulling another table up from the back yard.
Ever hopeful I even moved one of the really large planters up by the house that  I want to fill with a tomato surrounded by a ring of marigolds and one of lettuce.

Fern Urn and Wild Violets

 The fern up here wasn't doing too well so I was glad I'd been sticking bits of other plants in the pot with it.

 The violets originally came from my husbands Grandmother and they've been running around everywhere we've lived for the last 30 years or so.

 It won't be long before these hosta plants and violets fill this pot and the fern's been cut back so it will get another chance later on.

I think it's off to a good start, don't you think so?