Phase One-Deck: Flowers

Hi there! My project this weekend was to get flowers into the planter boxes that The Hubs built for our back deck.

For this project I enlisted the help of my mom. I don't know anything about plants except for the ones that I like and think are pretty. The Hubs and I received a gift card for a nursery for the wedding last year from his aunts (THANK YOU!) and he insisted that I go and look for plants. My mom and I probably spent a good hour or so at the nursery looking at every plant and smelling all the herbs. Of course most of the flowers I liked were annuals (very discouraging); The Hubs and I don't want to have to plant these boxes every year so we knew we needed perennials. I picked up a few flowers and then my mom said she had some seed and some flowers at her house that she would give me. Score!

Here are a few flowers/plants I got at the nursery:

• snap dragons
• dianthus
• sweet basil ( I know basil isn't a perrenial but I wanted some herbs this summer)

First we filled the boxes with dirt that we dug up for the sprinkler system (this will be on another post soon, I hope). Then we began thinking of placement. We did the same "design" for each of the (4) boxes by the stairs and the box opposite of the staircase on the west side of the deck. Then we mirrored the same "design" for the boxes on the two corners. There are still two boxes (closest to the house) that are empty but we plan to do something totally different with those.

Also there are some more plants coming from my mom. I believe some creeping Jenny for the corner boxes. I am not sure what else she will be giving me but she is the expert in this scenario. I don't know a thing about planting and it was evident yesterday working beside her. I think my worst enemy is watering; I drowned the plants yesterday-ooops. They looked so sickly from being in the sun and transplanting and I didn't know any better. Good thing is Mom said I didn't kill them and then showed me the proper way to water.

Phase one is almost complete, just need a few more plants/flowers to fill in a couple gaps. Phase two is building benches between the planter boxes for additional seating. Summer is almost here and we are incredibly excited to use our deck more frequently!