Our new patio is a straight shot from our kitchen window, so the whole time that we have been planning our outdoor project we’ve been thinking about the view from the kitchen. One of the main considerations in my mind, has been flowers and having some lovely colors to look at. The great thing about the flower garden location is that we can sort of limit our purchases of big color to this central flower bed. We see it from all perspectives and it really makes the yard feel cared for.
We actually don’t have any other beds in the backyard and the front yard is pretty established, except that we are hoping to plant some more tulip and daffodil bulbs in the front yard. Since I am not doing a tutorial for that if you are interested on how to plant bulbs go here.
In fact, even before we had finished putting in the retaining/seat wall (we are telling you ALL about it tomorrow!) to hold in the flower bed we had planted several flowers. I can honestly tell you that we have watched our yard with so much pleasure this summer. Seeing the flowers grow in and the colors spread out like a blanket! WONDERFUL! It almost makes me want to do the dishes…(almost is the key word in that sentence, thought I would point that out!).
After enjoying our summer flowers so much, it was especially exciting to us when The Home Depot invited us to do a fall planting with them! Where we live now, our hardiness zone is between 6-7, according to the USDA Hardiness Zone Map. And since winter and frosts can come sort of early here, I am happy that we choose some hardier plants that can hold up to the cold a little longer! The good thing about buying plants at your local Home Depot, is that they take most of the guess work out of which zone you are in. They sell plants that do well in the climates that they are sold in. So take that as a good hint that the plants you choose can do well with proper care.
We decided to focus our fall planting on mums and pansies.
“Let’s Do This”
We bought a WHOLE lotta mums! At first when we were picking out our colors we decided to stick to warm colors, think red, orange, yellow. I feel like those colors just speak fall! Ya know what I mean? Pumpkins, fall leaves, hot chocolate (oh, maybe that isn’t a plant color, but it feels like fall to me!) those warm colors are just so comforting. But we also thought it would be good to add a little structure, and I really wanted some evergreens for the winter months when our back yard looks so dead! (if there is one thing that can sway my decision on a house it is trees!) in the winter when I don’t have full leafy green trees to look out at, it makes me really sad.
Here is what we found at our local Home Depot and decided to use in our patio flower garden, that is about 100 sqft.
Fall Flowers Plant List of What We Bought
Common Name
Botanical Name
Color
Features
Bulbs (will grow back each year)
Tulip
red
Daffodill
yellow and white
Annuals (won’t grow back)
Pansy
Viola
yellow, purple
boarder flowers
Cool Wave Pansy
Viola x wittrockiana
yellow, purple
spreading flowers
Flowing Kale
Brassica oleracea acephala
green, purple
vertical element
Cordyline
Cordyline australis
purple and
vertical element
Perrenials (will grow back each year)
Aster
Aster novi-belgii ‘Days’
purple
flower colors
Garden Mum
Chrysanthemum morifolium
red, yellow, orange
flower colors
Shrubs
Dwarf Alberta Spruce
Picea glauca ‘Conica’
evergreen
conical evergreen
We ended up going shopping twice once at the Lindon, Utah store as a big happy family and once in the Provo, Utah store to fill in the blanks, sans kiddos! The cashier in the garden center was so sweet to our girls! She gave them a few stickers and it REALLY HELPED cuz after 30 minutes of picking out plants they were loosing it!! (On the bright side… at least we didn’t have a potty training accident this time!!! We sure did the last time…)
After looking at flowers for about 40 minutes, we loaded up our trusty little trailer. (thanks for the help!) this baby has been our trusty little stead for 10 years of remodeling, no truck required!)
I sent my hubby (the landscape architect) back to the store and he came home with some bright bluish purple Asters. Totally throwing off my “warm color” vision, but the violet color was striking next to the others. And, ya know, I really should let him have some say, so I let him decide how he wanted to plant the beds. (I guess I have “design” control issues. He is a landscape architect after all, you think I would let him have his say more often… Well, I am trying)
He decided to do small groupings of color, leaving just our white petunias and a small edge of portulaca (ice plant) intact from our summer plantings. Now, before you get planting, Watch this video. Its a great resource for learning how to plant and how to prepare your beds.
We started our fall planting with a small “hedge” if you will. The new firepit (which we will tell you more about tomorrow) is the central hang out spot. Right now since the vegetable garden is in it’s full glory the firepit feels pretty private, but when the garden is dead or hasn’t grown in yet, I still wanted to have a bit of a screen if you will so we planted a little screen of 3 cone shaped evergreens called dwarf alberta spruce. (great instructions teaching you how to plant shrubs here or how to plant a tree here)
One thing that we learned from our Texas backyard is the beauty of spike fertilizers. We are not huge fans of really involved upkeep of our yards, but we love our plants to thrive… an oxymoron? Not with spike fertilizers…. The spikes do wonders for plants. We put them by every tree in our backyard (in Texas, years ago), and our $15 clearance one stick teeny tiny 3 feet tall crepe myrtles were 9 feet tall and AMAZINGLY full by the end of the first summer. Moral of this story: feed your plants you won’t be disappointed with what they do. We got a few bags of fertilizers, one for tree and shrub spikes, evergreen food, and fruit tree spikes.
Once the little evergreen screen was in place, we were able to see where everything else needed to be. First we weeded the rest of the bed, removed some of the pink flowers and loaded up the bed with some better soil. The soil has been completely neglected and really needed a nutrient refresh! (the girls are helping by digging out cups full of soil and pouring it on our brand new seat wall… I guess they need to be more involved with catching worms next time)
Our trusty little Homer bucket was great for catching all the weeds while we cleaned out the bed. Once the bed itself was all prepped. I let Justin do his thing (wait, who am I kidding, he did the bed prep all by himself too! Oops). He created a beautiful bunch of color groupings throughout the whole bed. I am telling you the color is AMAZING! It has made me happy to see it every time I look outside. The following pictures are all the plants laid out and how they will look next to each other.
This is how it will look from the kitchen window. NICE! ( I Should really wash my windows… sorry ’bout that!)
Justin and Josh (his bro) were fighting over which plants to plant. It took about three hours with the both of them planting together. That’s a LOT of mums!
This is the miracle gro garden soil that we used to help the plants to thrive. It tells you on each bag how much soil to buy for the size of garden that you have. The Homer bucket was nice for toting around while planting!
Basically, once the plants were in the ground and had a good drink, (it poured rain for about two hours after we finished the planting) that was convenient in many ways! We were now ready to sit back and just enjoy the new flowers.
And again the view from the window that we LOVE!
What exciting planting projects are you working on? Let’s Do This!
“I acknowledge that The Home Depot is partnering with me to participate in this fall planting project. As a part of the fall planting project, I am receiving compensation in the form of cash and gift cards, for the purpose of promoting this post and The Home Depot. All expressed opinions and experiences are my own words. My post complies with the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) Ethics Code and applicable Federal Trade Commission guidelines.”
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