Cabin Fever + Spring Fever = Garden Gnoming

This happens to me every year right around my birthday. As the winter chill begins to thaw, and the temperatures warm up just a bit…I start wanting to get outside and bask in the springy weather.

Every March, my thoughts start turning towards gardening and it becomes an obsession with me. I start imagining gorgeous flowers and lush greenery surrounding us in our outdoor living spaces and I feel a warmth inside of me that I cannot wait to let out. I want to go to the garden centers and browse their enormous selection of plants and I start daydreaming about what will look good placed in my gardens.

Two years ago, we put up a patio cover and suddenly our patio became a pleasant place to be. With the necessary shade on our west-facing patio, we were able to sit outside and enjoy the outdoors, and I was able to get things to grow in containers on the patio that made it a much more enjoyable place to be.

About a year ago, we pulled out a bunch of established plants in our front and back yard garden beds. Most of what we pulled were shrubs that did nothing other than sit there and be green. That’s all fine and good, but I want colorful flowers, too! So up came the shrubbery and in went roses, lilies, lavender, hydrangeas rhododendron and heavenly bamboo. Everything survived, except for one hydrangea, the rhododendron and one rose. And the survivors are flourishing, along with my previously planted confederate jasmine!

This year, I am determined to finish the front garden bed (only half-planted last year) and have been looking into shrub-like plants to plant between our yard and the neighbors’ driveway. I came up with Sweet Broom (yellow, fragrant flowers) and am giving an Azalea a try under the tree. I still need to decide what will work at the base of the tree next to the sidewalk…that area has become overrun with grass and needs to be cleaned out.

I think that I am going for a cottage look in the front of the house…the lavender that I planted next to the front door thrived and grew…I had to cut it back substantially a couple of weeks ago and can’t wait for it to start blooming with the coming warm weather. Sadly, one of my hydrangeas didn’t survive, so I went out and bought two more and planted them in front of our windows in the front of the house. Both purple roses are doing well…once everything in that bed begins to mature and expand, it will make a nice, lush garden of flowering fragrant wonder to enjoy.

In the back garden beds, I replaced the failed rose with a hibiscus. I do so love these plants and hope that this coral beauty grows and thrives. Especially since I will be able to view it from the bedroom window.

I continue to work on my annual container garden. This year, hubby helped me design a cinder-block and wooden shelving structure to place in the corner of our patio against the fence…creating a tiered unit to house a variety of plants…half of which will receive some form of sunlight, and half of which will not. I spent a few days arranging pots in an artful yet practical way, and Hubby put in a drip irrigation system for me so that everything will receive water in the coming months. This will be especially important during the baking summer months.

I spent yesterday filling pots and getting the container garden set up. I have a wonderful assortment of fuschias, begonias, impatiens, strawberries, tomatoes, English ivy, ferns, marigolds, stock annuals, columbine, dianthus, delphinium, coral bells, lobelia and a purple potato bush filling my pots and I am hoping for another resurgence for my mums. I still have pots to fill, but think that I will wait to see what else comes out at the garden centers as the season progresses.

I even tackled the small patio garden bed and put in what I hope to be permanent vines…pink jasmine. I chose them because they’re so fragrant and grow quickly…I look forward to sitting around the fire pit on the patio and basking in their scent!

I still need to find the energy to get everything mulched…that means at least one more trip to the garden center this week. And I have more pots to place and fill…I may finally tackle the empty spot at the end of the driveway, but need to look into converting the existing sprinkler into a drip system for the plans that I have in my head.

I do so love to plan and organize my little gardens. I wish that we had more space…I’d work in a vegetable garden and spend the spring and summer months tending to vegetables and herbs. Alas, that will be something for the future. In the mean time, I spend my time concentrating on the little pot of land that we have and putting together a pleasant little area for us to live in and enjoy.

Spring fever always gets to me.