Here is what the front garden beds looked like at the end of may.

East side of the building

First

Second

Third

Fourth

West side

My mom sent me the blue container on the right.  It is a hanging flower pot, so I put it on the fence with some creeping jenny and yellow flowers to compliment the blue.  It looked odd alone- groups of three are more attractive than singles or pairs (unless it is flanking something).  I found these two buckets at the thrift store.  The one in the middle has the same feel as the blue one, an over all similar shape, filigree that is similar to the blue paint.  The last bucket was brown.  I didn’t like that so I gave it a couple of coats of white spray paint.  I punched holes in the bottom of both.

I added white petunias in the middle bucket because I wanted to keep the blue hanging pot as the focus.

Containers on a fence

Last year this garden was weeds and trash.  I found two old fashion window weights, chicken bones and tons of glass.  I am crating a wild flower garden in this tiny strip of ground.  Thanks to my parent’s generous established garden I have bee balm, spider wort,   columbine, black-eye Susan’s and Daisies.  I started cone flowers and more columbine and daisies from seed this winter to plant.  We will see how it establishes itself this year and enjoy the blooms next year.

New Garden

I made a fairy garden as well.  Making some items from Sculpy as well, and splurging on Blue Star Creeper and wooly tyme.

My fairy garden

View 1

View 2

View 3

So I discovered the idea of fairy gardens and fell in love with them.  I then spent about 6 months assembling the stuff for my building’s kids to make a garden each- and as always on a budget.

The garden bowls are chip bowls for a dollar each from a dollar store with holes melted into the bottom.  I found extras and pebbles at the dollar store, thrift store and saved the shells from baked clams.

The cute bird baths, worms and stepping stones were made by the kids with sculpy, at the fraction of the cost of buying them.

I then bought value packs of Irish Moss, and the impatiens were donated by another family in the building.

G Man’s Garden

A girl’s garden

S darling’s garden

B’s Garden

The gift of special tomato plants didn’t work out for my dad (they died and didn’t have replacements) so I knit him up two gnome finger puppets instead.

I got these four place mats for $1.99, plus two belts for 66 Cents for a grand total of $2.65 for a lovely tote bag.

Place mat bag

I am the proud owner of 15 varieties of mint!  Some I scavenged, some I bought at a local nursery and five I bought online from http://fragrantfields.com/mints-perennials.aspx .

They are:

1. Sweet mint 1- started from seed last year.

2. Sweet mint 2- bought from home depot and made cuttings.

3. Sweet mint 3- from my Dad’s garden

4. Mystery Mint- might be sweet, might be curly found in an alley.

5. Orange mint- from home depot

6. Chocolate mint- from home depot

7. Lemon mint- local nursery

8. Mohjito mint- local nursery

9. Berries and cream- local nursery

10. Pineapple Mint- local nursery

11. Ginger Mint- http://fragrantfields.com

12. Sweet Pear- http://fragrantfields.com

13. Candy Pops- http://fragrantfields.com

14. Iced Hazelnut- http://fragrantfields.com

15. Fruit Sorbet – http://fragrantfields.com