Winter beds

So, once we got the patio to about 95% done, we could see how much material was left over for another project. Turns out, it was a decent sized pile of left over retainer wall blocks, so my first thought was: landscaping! And sooo, with that in mind, I quickly hatched out a plan for adding a more secluded raised flowerbed in the back southeastern corner of the yard, away from the public eye.

I decided it would be a seasonal bed – rotate out what’s in there, so a series of annuals, mostly. And a place to showcase the plumeria when they are in season (right now, they are dropping leaves, and the last bloom fell off this morning – a tiny little Rhonda flower, half-unfurled), by leaving them in pots and plunging them into the soil. Figured I could surround them by other semi-tropical looking plants as well. I’ll worry about that when things warm up. First things first was getting the bed structure laid out.

So on Saturday morning a few weeks ago, I started chiseling off the little “feet” on the back side of the blocks, so that they could be arranged into curves. An easy, but tedious task which involved stooping and hauling heavy blocks of concrete around the back yard. After about 3 hours of this in a few chunks, I got the basic shape in place, with an idea of how the multi-tiered look would flesh out.

Basic bed layout

The following Friday, Ivy and I picked out some cyclamen and ranunculus (and a random package of eggplant seeds) to start visualizing.

Cyclamen

Work progressed quickly from that point. Got the walls all built up and put alyssum and cyclamen in the lowest corner on the right:

Cyclamen and alyssum in the lowest section

Filled the tallest section with dirt and planted a bushy green-and-yellow pencil croton and 3 “Petra” crotons:

Crotons

Filled the surrounding moat with dirt:

Dirt moat

And filled the remaining area with several fall/cold weather classics: snapdragons, dusty miller, bright yellow pansies and purple-and-yellow violas (which I knew as “Johnny Jump-Ups” as a kid). I’m very happy with the end product 🙂

Raised 3-tier flowerbed