Millie’s Garden Spring 2022 Additions, Part 1 |

It’s only May, and I feel I’ve already added as many plants as I should for the season. And yet, I still have a whole list of plants on my wishlist.

It’s always hard every year – I look at the bare spaces, I look at what has come back and what hasn’t, and I check my wishlist for what we’ve said we want to add. I try to set a budget, for the monetary as well as the physical expense.

After the first summer of digging all of those holes, and watering through those hot, rain-less periods of time, I realized how physically taxing it was to try to add too much at one time. We try to add everything early spring or mid-fall now, before the extreme weather comes in…

This spring, as we were preparing to add to the garden, I had three focus areas: one of our hills which has remained pretty much barren, except for weeds, and filling in along the edges of the garden with more plants before mulching in along these borders.

The hill I was looking to fill in has one butterfly bush on one end and daffodil bulbs on the other. Last summer we had a bunch of sedum, a packet of annual butterfly attractor mix, and some lavender.

The sedum got choked out by weeds, the lavender was overgrown by the butterfly mix, and by the end of summer, it was just one big weed patch between the butterfly bush and the daffodils.

This is the last hill we need to fully mulch, and before doing that, I wanted to add some flowers. I found some promising perennials at Glenhaven Greenhouses:

Gaura

According to gardenista, Gaura is Greek for “superb.” These flowers have really settled in the hill well and have added height and begun to set buds too. These are a great full-sun, drought tolerant plant.

Ice plant

According to atozflowers.com, Delosperma…or ice plant…is a symbol of good luck and good fortune. I chose this plant because I was looking for a ground cover and we already had some sedums in the flower bed. Delosperma is a cold hardy succulent and ground cover, native to South Africa.

Tickseed

Petalrepublic shares the symbolism for coreopsis, or tickseed: cheer and love. And don’t we all benefit from a little cheer and love?

The Spruce calls it a low-maintenance, drought-tolerant, long-blooming flower. Yay! My kind of plant.

Echinacea

Another plant that is sun loving and drought tolerant, atozflowers.com states echinacea’s symbolism is strength and health.

As I added these new additions in the bed, I rediscovered two sedum that had actually made it through, always a happy discovery.

Finally, I pulled as much of the dang wire grass and weeds as I could. I think of Daddy every time I get a really healthy chunk of that grass- it’s a tenacious grass and far reaching. Daddy always said, “That blame wire grass could grow on the moon.” And I believe him.