back in the swing of things

so here it is, a month into spring and i haven't done much to update the garden blog.  please forgive me, it has been a busy month and we have been sorely lagging behind in our gardening duties at home.  the demo garden looks wonderful though.  luckily, for us, the weather has been cooperating.  it hasn't warmed up as quickly as it does some springs and this is working to our favor since we were late in starting seeds.  one thing we have done is start our lasagna beds along the front walkway of the house.  they had completely compacted over the winter and we added new layers and plants.  

the view of the walkway with the lasagna bed at the corner in the foreground and all the way at the end of the walk in the top left corner of the photo.  the spaces inbetween have been filled in with iris, hostas, ajuga, trifolium (fancy clover) and other shade tolerant plants.  the beds along the house on this side of the steps also have seen new additions of hostas, heucheras, convullaria (lily of the valley) and more.  the beds on the other side of the steps, which are not shown in the picture have many new plants including, native phlox, dicentra (bleeding hearts), hostas, heuchera, may apples, convullaria, autumn ferns and more.  the lasagna bed is pictured with it's first new layer-fresh cut grass.

a close-up of the grass layer

the second layer is pine needles.  this is the small bed at the end of the walkway.  it recieves more sun than the large bed so it will feature slightly different plants.

after adding a layer of leaves to both beds, i topped it off with a layer of peat moss.

a variety of shade loving coleus and begonias were planted in the bed and the surface was sprinkled with lime to help lower the acid level in the bed.  

this bed has some verbena along with the begonias and coleus and it also was limed.

out in the front of the yard is a raised bed that forms a circle around our little silver maple tree.  the bed is planted with tulips and daffodils as well as some creeping phlox, hyacinths and a bunch of snapdragons that self sow each year.

the lilac bush was beautiful this year, we had many blooms to cut and enjoy in vases in the house.