Growing a Green Thumb

After seeing 2 tulip plants and a hyacinth plant, Dallen and I decided to put in a flower bed alongside the fence at our apartment. This is the first time we had a garden of any sort. Ever since I took Floral Design a couple years ago I thought it would be great to someday grow cut flowers. Our apartment already has rose bushes, so I enjoyed making mini-bouquets (really just cutting one here and there when they bloomed) with them.

I look forward to seeing the asters, dahlias, lilies, and Liatris spicata blooming. So far we got all the asters and dahlias in. Tomorrow we'll put in about half of the lilies and liatrises. There is a lot of purple/magenta/pink going on with the flowers we chose. The tiger lilies break that trend with their orange. It'll be good to have something a little different, especially come Halloween.

The reason we chose the flowers we did is because they are pretty low-maintenance since most of them are perennials, so they'll grow back year after year (with the exception of dahlias--they can be though if you put mulch on top of them at the end of the growing season to keep them warm throughout the winter). Since we already had a few rose bushes and tulips, we wanted flowers that got along with what we had. Dahlias and asters fit that qualification. As for the Tiger lilies, we chose those because they have some medicinal properties and are edible, but the main reason is because that is what my grandma had when I was a little kid and thought they were pretty cool flowers. As for the liatris it provides another line/filler flower. I wanted flowers that would look great in a bouquet.

I hope all the flowers will blossom, as this is the first time ever gardening on my own. I also hope after we do all the initial weeding that the weeds will stay at a minimum. Weeding is sure a lot of work (I used to hate doing it as a kid--always afraid of pulling out the actual plant instead of the weed), but it is rewarding when I see how far we have come.

This is only the first half of the first section. There are 3ish other sections.