My Garden -- One Year Later

Time really flies!   By the end of this month, we have been living in our current house for one whole year.  Almost immediately after we moved in, I started planning, digging and planting my garden from almost scratch.

This would be a perfect time for this gardener to look back what have been changed over one year period, and what plants have worked well and what did not in their location.

** This post is majorly for my own record keeping, so it is quite long.  I won't blame you if you don't make it to the end :)  Hope at least the pictures are interesting to look... **

Before we moved in, the only landscape this house had is in the east side of the front yard, to which I only made some small changes.   Here is how it looks like today.

You can see my front patio and the left side of the walk way  are over-crowded with lots of containers.  That is because this is the only partial shade area that I can find for my Orchids, Begonias, Bird's Nest fern, shade loving Bromeliads, Persian Shield, Mona lavenders, and some house plants.  One of my fall/winter projects on my list is opening one shade/partial shade flower bed on the side of my house, so that I can move some of these plants there, and make the front patio more inviting :)

Here is from another direction.  The crotons (Mammey) became bare sticks after the devastating cold weather early this year, but now their colorful foliage is coming back.  The red Ixora behind the crotons are all showing the buds, so very soon this front bed will look very cheerful!

I did not change much in this area except planting some bromeliads, bulbines in the very front rock area.  I also replaced a white begonia bush (not performing well then) with the sago palm.  Now I think this might not a good change since the Sago palm could grow bigger over the years, and then it would block the front view to the house.  Hmmm, maybe a move is in the order before it is too late? 

This is the west side of the front yard.  It had some bushes that came with the original builder landscape around a small oak tree.  I removed all the bushes, opened and planted this bed from the scratch.

The two African Iris were doing fine, and now are almost done flowering. Blue/Purple verbenas obviously love their location in the center of the front border.



I am not very satisfied with this bed since the back of this bed is at a lower point, get flooded whenever we have a heavy pouring.  So, I may raise the level more.  Three ground orchids I put here are not thriving.  I think they might not like the afternoon sun this area got since other ground orchids in a more shaded corner in the back yard looked much better.  The two Brazil Red Hots were frozen to the ground in the past winter, and they are now bouncing back, but not quick enough.

Now please follow me to the back yard...

Our back yard is most taken by the swimming pool and the paved area around the pool.   There are 2 to 4 feet wide stripe of grass land within the fence around the back yard.    Along with the side of the house, all these stripes are pretty much all land that I can play with for my garden.

Here are two pictures that show how the backyard looked like when the house was on the market for sale early last year.

Backyard before #1 (March 2009)

Backyard before #2 (March 2009)

This is the southeast corner of the backyard today... 

Compared to the "Before" #1 picture,  I removed two ficus hedges from this corner (borrowed some muscle power from my husband) to open up the lake view more, and then created this corner bed last year. Then I changed this corner again in March.

Backyard southeast corner in May  2010

Major plants in this corner are: Jatropha tree (left side of the picture), three different kinds of Agaves, bulbines, purple queens, lantanas, Allamanda, marigolds and Celosia. These are all sun loving plants, and are doing fine in this location. Especially bulbines and agaves requires almost no care at all. Allamanda (the bush like plant on the left side of the picture) is recovering very well from the ground after the freeze, very soon their yellow flowers will bright this corner even more.

Overall I am quite happy with this corner.  When the plants grow to their mature sizes, I might need to move some plants out of this corner, but I think the combination of bulbine and agaves is working great so far.

As of the south side of the backyard, it had nothing but a lone Christmas palm (see "before" picture #2).  Around that Christmas palm, I opened my very first flower bed right after we moved in.  This takes about one third of the whole length of the south stripe.

This is the flower bed looked in May this year...

Backyard south bed in May 2010

This bed again is in a full sun area.  The plants go there are:  two rose bushes, diamond frost, pentas, Mealycup Sage (blue flower), sedum (ground cover), pink vinca, two purple fountain grasses, two blue porterweed, two lantanas, some bromeliad under the tree, one agapanthus, and some annuals. 

You can see since this was my first flower bed, I bought most of plants in pair.  And with no experience at all, I planted them quite closely since the young plants looked so small :)  Now they are all cowded, especially the lantanas in front of the purple fountain grass and porterweed can not get much air circulation, and developed some black spots on the leaves ( I post the problem in this post).  I may need to remove one porterweed, and/or move the lantanas to some other more opened area.

Now here comes the biggest bed I have opened, and my most work goes into this bed as well! 

This bed is on the west side of the backyard, which had absolutely nothing except the grass before.  The following three pictures are how it looked like in May this year.

Backyard west bed  in May 2010

Backyard west bed in May 2010

Backyard west bed in May 2010

Wow, how did I manage to stuff so much into this bed so quickly?!  I just remembered that I visited the nurseries at least once or twice each weekend since last year Novemember, and brought more and more plants home. Then I saw some plants posted by my fellow garden bloggers, and I just had to have them!  Almost all those plants I managed to find a spot in this bed, and then moved them around so frequently afterward.  I remember Kimberly at Garden in Paradise once claimed herself as a "professional plants relocator" in one of comments she left on my post.  I guess I can borrow that title as well! 

Most of my location consideration for the plants are by their favorable light condition, not the color.  As the result, the color scheme is not that in harmony in my opinion.  When I open more flower beds, I might have that luxury to do more color coordination since I will have more space to move them around :)

The end of this bed that closes to the lake is the "Rose corner" since it gets most of the sun, and the end that closes to the house is the "Bromeliad corner" which only gets some morning sun.

Since this bed is on the west side, and the neighbour's hedges and the coconut trees provide some shade in the afternoon, and the most of the sun the plants got are the morning and middle day sun.  I found majority of the plants are loving this micro environment.  For the same reason, the plants got some protection when the prolonged freeze weather hit South Florida in this past winter.

Here are more pictures this same flower bed looked like this month.  Compared to the ones in May, it is less colorful since the deep pink snapdragons in front of the Mexican Bush Sage (Salvia leucantha) were gone, and the bright red/pink geraniums are also done the flowering. 

Backyard west bed in June 2010

Backyard west bed in June 2010

Backyard west bed in June 2010

Backyard west bed in June 2010

Backyard west bed in June 2010

With the white Angel's Trumpet flowering in the middle, and the White Christmas caladiums leaves, it gives the cooling factor to this bed, very suitable for the summer of the hot hot South Florida.  I found myself like this June color better than the May color in this bed. What is your opinion?

In case you are interested to know the detail plant list of this bed.  Here are the major plants from the sunny area ( rose corner) to the partial share area (bromeliad corner).  I did not list some small plants I temporarily tucked in.

Six rose bushes (all hybrid tea rose) in the Rose corner.
One dipladenia pink
One porterweed
Two Mexican Bush Sage (Salvia leucantha)
Rudbeckia 'Tiger Eye Gold' (newly added this month)
Three Agapanthus africanus (Relocated here from the front yard)
One red and one pink Geraniums
Ornamental Sweet Potato 'Margarita' with chartreuse leaves
Three Devil's Backbone
Three Aechmea blanchetiana 'Orangeade'
One Angel's Trumpet
Two Gloden Shrimp plants (behind Aechmea blanchetiana 'Orangeade', along the fence);
Two Hibiscus bushes
Two Yellow Africican Iris
Two pineapples I rooted from the grocery-bought pineapples' cutting. One of my fun experiments;
Three Variegated shell gingers ( I am sure I need to move some out of this bed in the future when they grow bigger)
Pink Vincas
Three Ground Orchids (Spathoglottis)
Three Kalanchoe
Caladiums
About 15 bromeliads in the Bromeliad corner.

I hope I have not bored all you to this point.  I promise I am almost done with this post!

When I was writing this post, I realized that I have done quite a lot in the past year, and to be honest the result is better than what I expected.  I thought I just experiment with the gardening a little when all this started, never expected to this extent.  Within this past year,  I have surely experienced all the excitement, joys, disappointment and sorrows that a typical gardener, especially a new gardener would have experienced. 

A BIG "THANK YOU" to all of you who have read, commented my posts, provided help and supported me along the way.  I am glad that I started this blog half year ago, and which got me to know so many wonderful gardener friends out there.  I am sure that I will keep recording my garden progress on this blog and share with all of you! 

While all these flower beds are not complete yet (will they ever be?), more garden projects are on my mind for the fall and winter time...  Can not wait to materialize them! 

Stay tuned and thanks for reading :)

Oh, the last but certainly not the least.  Today is the Farther's Day.  I want to say "Thank you and Happy Farther's Day" to my kids' dad, my dear husband!  Thank you for the constant moral and muscle support you have given to me this past year on my gardening projects!  Thank you for never complaining about my frequent trips to the nurseries and all those extra time I spent in the garden!!!

And, Happy Farther's Day to all of the farthers who happen to read this post!