This weekend was a perfect storm of nice (un-hot) weather and no commitments, so we spent some of it re-doing a plant bed in the front yard. It has been an unkempt mess of asparagus fern surrounded by decaying landscaping timbers.
Over the past month or so, I'd been ripping out the well-established carpet of asparagus fern. That was a big job in itself, since the plant is a little prickery, and the root system is thick. With that done, we went to a garden store to get some flowers that would do well in that shady area.
We got some purple Verbena, pink Vinca, and two other kinds of flowers whose names I can't recall. The whole family had fun planting them in the bed, which we then covered up with some cedar mulch, which tends to last several years, as well as smelling great while it's fresh.
We kept the landscape timbers to save some money, but I did remove a whole section of the bed. There used to be three trees in the raised bed, but when we bought the house, two of the trees had been cut down and were just stumps. The bed was shaped like a "U" to encompass all three trees. Now, though, the two stumps have decayed enough that they can almost be planted on top of. But regardless, we certainly didn't need all that bedded area, so I removed several timbers and cut some that remained so I could take an arm off of the "U". I like the space much more now, althogh I still have yet to seed or sod the newly-exposed area.
Since then (Saturday), we've been watering it every day, with the hopes that at least half of the plants survive and spread. I'm pleased with the way it looks, and if the plants survive, it should look even better as the plants spread.