This Week's Project :: East Garden

Before i've mentioned about the front door of our house being physically on the side of our house.  It's peculiar, but we work with it.  There is a garden just beyond the stairs leading up to the front door.  It's known as our "rose garden"--especially because it is small, they work well there because we can't collect too many of them.  Roses are beautiful however when you are trying to focus on growing food, they really are useless, eh?  This garden is viewed upon entry numerous times a day.  As an extra added bonus, when one here is crafting or folding laundry (in that order of importance, of course) the windows in these two rooms provide an upclose view of this garden weed hole as well.

So you can imagine that when it looks like this:

"Curse you, you bloody buttercups!  And the unfinished compost you rode in on!"

and this:

"Same goes for you, you bothersome vetch!"



it really bugs the head gardeners here.  Especially because this little rose tree was given to Mrs. Head Gardener by Mr. Head Gardener for her 30th birthday (which was a short 6 years ago) and now appears dead.  Grrr.

This morning, i congratulated myself on losing another two pounds (for a total of 4 this month so far) by visiting the garden shop near my morning meeting.  If i had my druthers, i would have purchased a columnar apple to replace this rose, however, since we aren't staying here (we hope!) i decided to use what i had budgeted for more than just one new transplant. :)

The Haul

The area of this garden also happens to be our only patch of lawn not visable to all the neighbours, so we like to lounge out here every once in a while.  Over the years, i've planted areas up with mosquito repelents like lemon balm, sages, and rosemary.  I continued that theme today, picking up more of the same.  I also threw in a couple of tarragon plants, hollyhocks, allysums, and lingonberries. 

I have only had a chance to tend to this little area under our Pope John Paul II rose bush today. 

I planted the tarragons, pineapple sage, and some chive seeds in this area.

I was going to plant this sage here too...

 however i think the lingonberry looks much better here.

In the area where the rose tree was, in will go black hollyhocks, a purple sage, a lemon balm, and some of the allysums.  Some cherry coloured nasturtiums seeds may make their way into the area as well as some borage too, me thinks.  Another lingonberry and lemon balm will be planted just to the left of the hollyhocks.  With the lavendar "bookending" the hollyhocks, i think this will be a great new twist on this garden.