Gardening! Bringing life back to the front yard.

According to a local plant nursery, Eugene Oregon experienced the coldest winter this past season 2013 in 40 years!

I believe her, according to a weather history site the coldest day we had was Dec 8th, 2013 with a low temperature of -10*F the previous average low being 36*F. And then we had our longest cold spell from January 9th to January 25th, 17 consecutive days with cooler than average low temperatures.
Brrrrr!!   Needless to say my yard suffered a little bit with 5 of my very large gorgeous Spanish Lavender bushes dying.

In case you aren't sure what i'm talking about here is a picture of Spanish Lavender:


With the weather getting nicer I've been spending time outside trying to get my yard back to its former glory. I've been planting mostly perennials because I hate spending money on plants that die each year, other goals that I have for my yard include:

• Planting flowers - the previous homeowners planted mostly ornamental grasses. Very boring in my opinion, I left the ones that look nice and didn't stab me like these nice ornamental blue grasses:
• And planting specifically flowers that make for great cut arrangements and attract honey bees, humming birds, and butterflies.

This last weekend the weather was gorgeous so I finally took the time to finish pulling all the dead plants and prep my yard for some new flowers.
Armed only with a knowledge of common toxic plants (I don't want to get anything that could make my dogs sick!) and plant size requirements I then drove myself down to a local nursery and began my hunt!

Here is what I found!

For in front of my porch I was looking for a shade happy plant that has low sunlight requirements. My house casts quite a shadow in this particular spot and I'm constantly struggling with plants not growing very well.
The winner for this location was the acanthus mollis, a.k.a. "Tasmanian Angel" - it has large green and white mottled leaves, grows up to 3 feet tall and blooms white/purple floral spikes (they're soft to touch I checked!).


















For a very sunny location in the front corner of my yard I wanted a pretty flowering bush, so I settled on what is called Prostanthera Poorinda Bride, a.k.a. "Australian Mint Bush" - very pretty tiny creamy white blooms and it smells like chocolate!


I also put in another rosemary bush - I love these for baking!















And last but not least a Digiplexis "Illumination Flame" - this is a tall perennial that looks somewhat like a foxglove but isn't toxic as far as I'm aware.

I don't enjoy fighting tree roots while I dig but it was an overall very fun and relaxing experience.
And i'm looking forward to watching my plants grow!

Ziva surveying my work.