2009 - Our First Herbal and Butterfly Garden!

Our first garden was small, but we managed to break ground and have a garden.  The plan was to have it out from the patio and be a lot larger and sit on the small slope.  It was going to be a stepped raised garden on the slope.

We went to a local garden store and bought up some plants and started some seeds in a Jiffy seed starting kit.  Our kitchen was a garden factory for a few weeks before the last frost.  We had basil, parsley, oregano, sunflowers, cherry tomatoes and cilantro growing on our kitchen table.

Cherry Tomatoes started from seed in a hanging basket.

Our vision for this jungle of weeds next to the stairs is hard to believe what it has become known as the Butterfly Garden today.  Thistle, thick grass, hard clay, rocks, rose of sharon bushes, and various other plants that I could not make out had to be removed, root and all.

My mom suggested we keep the small bush out from the house.  I sure was glad we did!

Evan salvaging soil from weeds.

Once all the weeds were gone from the corner, the dirt was smoothed out and leveled to house our new plants.

Evan lays out the garden path.

Lamb's Ear, Day Lilies (Red and Gold), Butterfly Flowers, Clover, Coneflowers, and some ground cover filled this Butterfly Garden.  We started the path, but never finished until later.  I believe I wanted to make it go somewhere else, but ended up just curving it around the garden.  After a few rains, the garden had to have a retaining wall to keep the dirt and plants from washing away.

Here is the rest of the garden in picture review:

Our first Strawberry!!!  Oh so tasty and small!

The small town of Smurfs just outside our herb garden.

Look at those tomatoes go!

As the dill, basil, mint, and various other transplants grew, we added a green pepper and tomato plant to the mix.  During this summer, our grass grew out of control.

Bloom baby Bloom!

What a happy contrast to what was before.

Insert 'Jaws' movie theme song here.  Not wanted in our garden, but fun to see munching outside our fence.  Again with the grass. The deer LOVED our lush grass as well as all our yummy garden items.  In some areas the grass grew two plus feet tall and it took four days to cut it and had to start all over to keep up with it.

Mini herbal garden test.  It failed.  It was too hot on the patio and did not get enough water.  Even though we got plenty of rain this year.

Strawberries on the Left - Cherry Tomatoes on the Right.  The Tomatoes in the hanging basket did not make it's appearance in the next years, BTW.  There is that tall grass again.  Boy-o-boy was it so tough to keep it down.  Rain, Rain, Rain!

Beautiful Rose of Sharon (that my mom told me to keep) tripled in size and blooming, made a great privacy barrier from our next door neighbor.  Look how big the Lamb's Ear got!

These were very unhappy driveway sunflowers that originally started on our kitchen table.  They were stunted by the deer's hungry appetite.  So sad to look at.

We learned from our mistakes this year and hopefully we will improve on it for the next years to come.