a garden tour, part II

Welcome, again, to my little abode.  I thought I'd show the rest of my growing gardens.  I've been doing so much work in them recently, that I must say, I'm pretty proud.  Please enjoy!!

Last week I showed you my dear vegetable garden and flower bed that are on the side of my house.  This, however, is my new little perennial bed and I'm so very excited about it!  In the middle of it, you will find my new chokeberry bush.  It has white flowers in the spring, black fruit in the summer, and vibrant colors in the fall.  I love shrubs that have multiple traits to show off, and this one seems to be a winner! 

This new bed also includes a couple bee balm plants, a few veronica plants, some wild ferns, catmint, a few varieties of hosts, sprite astilbes, and a sedum ground cover.  I'm hoping to soon add a vernal witch hazel to the other side of the bed as well. Once that's added, then the bed will be complete for this year.  Next year, I'll see how things fill out the space and add a few other things both for fullness and color.  

This bed was somewhat established (the bricks and boulders, not the plants) when we bought the house.  I've tweaked the spacing of everything a bit and added all of the plants to truly make it my own and to make it a focal point of the back yard.  The space directly around the tree was blooming with tulips a week and a half ago, but is now filled with wave petunias, bacopa, and impatients.  The larger area is filled with different varieties of hostas, Siberian iris, day lilies, sweet woodruff, sedum, coral bells.  

Our deck is one of our favorite places to spend summer days.  My mornings often start with some quite reading and a cup of coffee in those garage sale red chairs, while most of our summer meals are eaten at our hand-me-down table and chairs.  The pots on the deck are filled with annual flowers, annual herbs (a bushy dill variety, rosemary, and cilantro), and greens (mixed greens, and kale).  

I'm quite in love with this little plot of land of ours in the heart of the city.  How about you?  What things are you planting to make your space your own??