Week One: Planning a Brooklyn Garden!

Three weeks ago, I shared some slightly embarrassing photos of my front ‘garden, ’ which were actually taken about a month prior when the weeds were still manageable. Fast forward to mid-May and there were knee-high dandelions, huge tufts of milkweed, and mugwort everywhere. It gave new meaning to ‘maintenance-free gardening’ and definitely NOT in a good way! Here she is in mid-April:

In the three weeks since, Zach and I committed to getting it done since we both knew it was going to be a ton of work and we are AWESOME at procrastinating if given the chance. We hated what was left of the red mulch, the metal landscaping liners, and the bricks in disarray. So the first weekend we spent pulling weeds and thinking. Then over Memorial Day weekend, we did the majority of the intensive labor and dug up the whole area, sifting out glass, kitchen knives, liquor bottles, petrified chicken bones, and suspicious-looking glass tubes.

After digging the whole yard up, we had a pretty good idea of what to do with the space this year and I put together the colorful plan below. The front of the house faces south and gets direct sun all day, so we needed something that was heat-and-drought tolerant. We settled on a plan with three major zones – an herb garden, a butterfly garden with some native plants, and a healthy selection of sedums:

The herbs are concentrated along the stairs where we’ll have easy access to them, while the rear corner will be home to our tomato plants, and any other container veggies we’ll want to protect from the wind (and curious neighborhood cats). To the left are our salvia, yarrow, phlox and butterfly bushes which should hopefully flower throughout the summer. And finally, across the front of the garden are the low-growing sedum, which will provide some ground cover and lots of textural succulent goodness. We couldn’t bring ourselves to dig out the chyrsanthemums just yet, but I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stand them. They’re so ugly in the summer! Anyone want to come and dig yourself a pot of ‘em?

And after lots of planning and hard work, here’s what it looks like now!

Now the hard part comes: PATIENCE. Grow, little plants!