I've shared our little kitchen garden loads of times, so you know how much I love it. But what I never really liked was how it looked so new in the yard. It jutted out in the space instead of blending more seamlessly into the yard.
Last weekend, we decided to finally do something about it. The idea came to us when we swapped out our blueberry bushes for knock-out roses and needed a new home for the blueberries. Not to mention all those hostas we had removed when creating the garage garden...they were still thriving, but needed a permanent home ASAP.
Hence the new side gardens were formed. We continued with the existing gardens on either side by elongating the curve to connect with the end post of the kitchen garden fence.
Gotta love a good action shot of Mr. DD!
But seriously, this was hard work. The area is riddled with large roots from the very established trees, which made it really hard work. There's also an in-ground watering system in the backyard, so you can't exactly just get in there and chop it up. Very tricky. Fortunately, Mr. DD was up to the task.
Work it, honey.
The side to the right of the garden, which is almost entirely shaded, received a couple of our tried and true green hostas, as well as a couple of variegated hostas for interest.
Now the new side garden flows seamlessly into the shade garden off the patio. And definitely helps to make the kitchen garden not stick out so awkwardly into the yard.
The side to the left of the kitchen garden, which receives a fair amount of sun, became the new home of our blueberry bushes, as well as more hostas and this beautiful 'black lace" elderberry shrub.
We picked up our elderberry on clearance at Home Depot a couple of years back and it has quickly turned into one of our favorite plants. Beautiful black lacy leaves with a pink flower...just stunning.
In fact, its taken me ages to post this because after we transplanted her, she was looking a little worse for the wear. But she's finally on the mend and picture worthy again {kind of}.
We still have loads more in the yard to sort out, as we seem to be tackling a couple of feet at a time, but we'll get there. Slow and steady wins the race, right? At least that's what I keep telling myself.
But, for now, this was a great, fairly simple and very inexpensive project that has made a big impact in the back yard. Love that.
Hope you have a great weekend! We have family in town and the weather seems to be working in our favor, so i'm sure we'll be spending a lot of time outside.
until next time,
