Every year I plan out a “big” garden project to tackle (and usually a bunch of little ones) but after last year’s garden enclosure project, I told Michael that I would “take it easy” on him this year. HA! Right… like he believed that. (He knows his wife way too well!) This year I decided that I wanted to plant a large butterfly garden in the far back and to the right of the garden enclosure. See above…

Years and years ago we built this trellis bench and tried to get some ivy to grow up it. However, I think we bought the wrong kind of ivy (ground ivy vs. climbing) because it never grew up but we have it growing amongst the grass everywhere now. We really didn’t use the bench much because the far back was not nearly as interesting as the front half of the yard.

Our backyard is split in half with Michael’s workshop right in the middle, so we have the front half and the back half with a walkway around both sides of the shop. Well when you don’t see something every day, you tend to forget about it. So the white paint chipped a lot and just got to be dirty and run down. (Really, no one ever goes back there to even see it.) Since we built the garden enclosure we are in the back a lot and therefore I am now ready to do something with the space.

We pressure washed the bench and started to put the green paint on it (before I decided I didn’t want it green and I actually want it brown. Lol). So this coming weekend we will be buying the correct color paint and getting it back to looking nice and usable again.

During the winter months I was browsing garden ideas on Pinterest and I across this garden plan. Better Homes & Gardens makes these garden layouts with various plants and they tell you how many to buy and where to put them. I have so many pinned and not enough space to plant them all. These are honestly one of the best things ever because I wouldn’t know the first thing about what to plant and get a look like this.

So behind the bench and in the corner will be this garden layout. We will need to level out the ground back there and we are building it up on a raised platform, so to speak. So Michael will be starting that hopefully this weekend. I have had all the plants since Mother’s Day and they have all been hanging out in their pots, just waiting to be planted. The month of May is usually our heavy gardening month and between the cold temps and rain, we lost the entire month. Oh well, we will get it done eventually.

This is the mess of plants that we will planting in the ground and I seriously can’t wait to do something with this back corner. It’s going to be beautiful when it’s all blooming and in season. Right now there is just a Rose of Sharon bush in that corner and that’s going to stay because I figured it would be a nice addition to the area.

Like I said above, I can’t just have one project going at a time. Along the side of Michael’s shop I have a long bed filled with hostas and my Grandma’s lilies. To give the space some more color and height, I bought some additional plants to mix in there that produce long purple flowers. (I can’t remember what they’re called right now.) I thought they would be a nice color combo with the orange lilies.

We are actually going to be expanding this bed outward to accommodate the new wooden obelisks that Michael made for me. He made them wider than I asked for and instead of having him redo them, I just said we could bring the bed further out. He told me that it wasn’t a problem, so that’s what we’re going. Don’t tell him this but I honestly don’t have any ideas on what I am going to plant on them. HA! I know I want some sort of vine plant but that’s about it. I will figure it out at some point.

There are also a couple other projects that Michael started for me last year but then lumber became scarce and impossible to find. They are (3) 6′ by 5′ trellises with boxes at the bottom that I plan on growing ivy in them. (the right kind this time. lol) and they will them sit along the house in my “secret garden” corner.

This picture is from a couple years ago when I added these flowering plants on some trellises to try and give it more of an enclosed feeling but it just didn’t do what I wanted. So that’s when I came up with the idea of the trellis “walls” along the house. Right now with the price of lumber, I think this project will be put on hold (I would rather spend the money on the lumber for the back butterfly garden) until next year but we’ll see. We have half the materials already for this project and I want to finally finish this space.

So this is what’s going on with me lately… lots of gardening and spending time outdoors. Which is fine by me! I love being outside, digging in the dirt, and turning my yard into a a space that I love.

XOXO, Jules