Yesterday was a beautiful day in the garden!  Finally, we had a day perfect for catching up on all the work outside.  The entire day was dedicated to working on planting flowers.

 

   The first task at hand was lining the wall planters with burlap.  Complete instructions on how to do this are in this earlier blog post from last year.  As you can see, in the picture below, I am about ten days behind last year!  It is already the twenty-third of May!

    My plan was to plant the salmon-pink colored petunias between two of the yellow calibrachoa.  Well, I changed my mind and chose to plant a ‘shock wave coconut’ white petunia between two of the yellow calibrachoa in each planter.

The color of the Creeping Jenny, ‘Goldilocks’, in the water garden is echoed by the yellow calibrachoa.

 

   There was a reason for this.  The terra cotta pots I painted with the DIY vintage decals on them were going to be planted with white petunias.  The deck is white, the white petunias in the pots and a splash of white in the wall planters successfully lead the eye all around the patio and also ties the white back to the deck. The wall of Annabelle hydrangea above the wall will soon have huge white blooms, too.

 

   The idea of using white flowers might not seem very creative, but don’t the white flowers show up more in the evening when other colors seem to disappear into the shadows?   Having them on the patio just makes sense, right?

 

   The pots flanking the front door were planted with red petunias, tiny white euphorbia, and red and white verbena.  The flowers in the pots will echo the red of the knockout roses in the front yard.   I love this variegated verbena!  It makes choosing flowers to go together so easy!

 

   The concrete planters flanking the walkway to the backyard were filled with the salmon-pink colored wave petunias.

 

   Dave helped me plant the two roses he gave me for Mother’s Day.  The climbing rose “Jacob’s Coat” was planted at the front of the deck.  I still need to make or buy a trellis for it.  A post is supporting it in the meanwhile.

 

   The beautiful ‘Peace Rose’ is now planted by the old mill stone in the garden.  It will be easy to see it from the back windows.  We removed a large hosta and transplanted it under the red maple.

 

   For some time, I have been trying to plant hostas in a large ‘S’ curving around the crabapple and back in the opposite direction around the red maple.  There wasn’t enough shade for several years.  Some of the hostas made it and some did not.  

 

   Finally, we have some serious shade and the hostas are doing well.  I won’t give up on this!  Maybe one day my vision will come to fruition!

 

    At the end of the day, I scattered moth balls in all of the pots to keep the squirrels and chipmunks out of them.  We surely have an abundance of those!

 

   After a shower and a change of clothes, Dave and I sat on the deck and looked over what we had accomplished during this beautiful day in the garden.