Planting Annuals by Picardy Project

landscaping

Planting Annuals

By Picardy Project on Aug 22, 2012

A little over 2 months ago my step mom and I visited several nurseries in the East Bay, and the best by far was Annie's Annuals (recommended by Heather and my step mom's amazing research). Wendy and I planned to stick with perennials and bushes and trees in the main part of the yard so that I wouldn't have to replant things, but we thought it would be fun to plant annuals in the flower bed against the window

And now that the front yard is so so so so so so so close to being done, it was time to get some flowers in there.

Cast Meryl headed on out to Richmond yesterday afternoon and asked the wonderful woman who came at the ring of the bell (literally, you get to ring a cool bell when you need help), "I would like plants for a 9' x 1' flower bed that gets good sun, blooms through the fall, and attracts honeybees, butterflies and hummingbirds, please." And of course the wonderful lady and wonderful Annie's Annuals spent about 15 minutes with me going through their wonderful sheets of materials

She circled plants she liked, told me how long they bloomed, which ones she had in her yard that did really well, what were California natives and was just all around super helpful and awesome. When I had the circled plants to look for I was a little unsure of how to find them, but TA DA! they have a binder telling you the aisle and table where every plant is located

With my plants circled I looked through them for the ones I remembered her saying that the bees really loved, or they bloomed a really long time and marked their location and then headed out through their amazingly organized rows and rows and rows of flowers

After about 20 minutes I settled on 9 plants (probably too many but I just couldn't help myself). I said goodbye to wonderful Annie's and brought my haul back home

I got several violas, a couple snap dragons, 2 coreopsis, a penstemon, and a cuphea starfire pink (the lady who helped me really liked that one). I went with plants whose flowers were mostly red, pink and yellow because I thought those colors would really pop against the house. There was some minor weeding, but nothing too bad. I laid out my too many 9 plants

And then I just got to planting

It didn't take too long at all and by late afternoon our flower bed was much improved

Now comes the terrible task of waiting for things to bloom

But the not terrible thing??? We only have one, ONE, thing left till we can call the front yard DONE:

Getting rid of this pile of shit in the driveway. I'm hoping it doesn't take us much longer to get rid of it because I really want to show you a pretty Before & After of the front yard without a pile of garbage on the driveway.