Getting Into (Flower) Beds

Oh, summer - when a man's thoughts turn to... well, probably not flowers.

As I may have mentioned previously, our yard boasts narrow flower beds all along the east and looong south fences. Right now, these are mostly full of grass, leaves, and weeds, but we hope to slowly transform them from dead wastelands to flowering utopias.

Wasteland...

However, it wasn't until last weekend that I found some time to dig up a little more than half of the eastern beds and do a little re/planting. I mostly used 'full sun' perennials, since these beds get daily sunlight from noon-ish onward, and I don't relish the idea of planting new flowers every year...

In what I'll refer to as bed 1, I planted three perennials. From left to right: an aurora light purple delphinium, a mesa yellow blanket flower, and a guardian early blue delphinium. Once fully grown, the delphiniums should be roughly 36-42" tall by 18-24" wide, flanking the (slightly shorter but just as wide) mesa yellow. As you can tell, I bought the blue one already with a bit of height to it!

Beds 1 (purple, yellow, blue) and 2 (orange)

In bed 2, I transplanted some orange tiger lilies that were in a little corner of the driveway and always entangled your legs whenever you passed through the gate. I replaced them with two blanket flowers - a yellow sunrita tangerine and a red sunrita burgundy picotee - which should only get about 10"-14" in height/width. No more foot tangling!

Little garage corner bed (where tiger lilies used to be)

Bed 3 then became the test bed for some blue cornflowers (annual weeds) that were growing wild around the driveway. Unlike other weeds I've pulled (i.e., dandelions), they have very short roots, so I'm not sure how well they'll survive the transplant.  They'll eventually be replaced with a perennial, anyway, but I thought it would be a good experiment.

Beds 3 (closest) and 2 (orange tiger lilies)

In the front of the house, I tried a denver daisy rudbeckia. Since it only requires part sun, I'm hoping it will do okay in this spot, which only gets sun in the latter part of the day, and is also partly shaded by a large maple tree. I tried mums here last year, but they didn't survive the winter, so I thought I'd try something different. I'll  post a photo of it once the bed is filled, but you can see the plant's profile at the above link.

All plants purchased came from Home Depot, though I'm planning on visiting some nurseries and garden centers before my next planting session, so hopefully I'll get some good advice and find something even more exciting for the rest of the beds!