Mom's memory garden

If you know anything about my family, you know that we like to work around the house (and by "we" I really mean Kyle). The one thing I really do like to do is landscaping and gardening.

For the past year or so, I've had in mind a perennial garden on the right side of our front yard. There is a couple around the corner who garden, and we've always admired their perennial garden (for those of you unfamiliar with gardening, perennials are those plants that usually bloom once a year and then die back, but return the following year). We've mastered the regular landscaping bed, and we were ready for a new challenge.

After mom died, the garden really took shape in my mind. I wanted a purple color scheme in honor of her favorite color, and I wanted an arbor and a decorative fence to serve as a backdrop. Tom sketched out an arbor design and then built it a month or two ago. He and Kyle installed it in our yard, and Tom and I installed the fence pickets. We moved an existing birdhouse (built by Tom) so that it anchors one side of the fence.

Today, the three month anniversary of mom's death, we finished her memory garden (and by "we" I mean mostly me). I've spent the past two days digging out the grass around the arbor and fence. Two and half yards of "bed mix" fill the bed (thanks, Kyle). The plants include an existing Natchez white crape myrtle (just now leafing out), a lorepetalum (we have two in the beds around the house and I love them), a rainbow Knockout rose, a climbing rose, and lots of perennials in shades of purple, pink, blue, and white: lavender, blue daze, spider flower, lily of the Nile, cone flower, society garlic, blue hill sage, Mexican bush sage, Shasta daisies, and verbena. I then planted a several varieties of bulbs: freesia, hardy phlox, gladiolus, and liatris. I'm a little unsure how the bulbs will do, and I really hope the rabbits don't eat them. I put a few little annual flowers (petunias and something else) just to fill in for now. I transplanted some Mexican heather from the front bed to the backside of the fence. Maybe one day I will grow confident/brave enough to plant a variety of roses back there.

One of my favorite things is the wind chime that I added under the arbor and the flagstone steps that lead through the arbor. This is a picture of the society garlic, not the windchime. I can't figure out how to get pics where I want them.

We topped it all off with a yard of black mulch. So pretty now, and I can't wait to watch as it fills in.