Step one: Just start digging

Perennials are amazing. Sure you have the initial investment, but then your dividends arrive a few years later and you are ready to divide! Yay! Free plants! So it will be no surprise that 95% of my garden landscape budget will be spent on these ground pleasers.

There are only a few established plants at our new home. One of them happens to be a thriving patch of Sedums. I divided these plants 7 ways. Love, love, love. Sedums are really quite beautiful and unique. All summer long they provide a textured mint green foliage that resembles a succulent and then after all your summer blooming babies have past their peak, Sedums decide to give summer one last wave goodbye with a mass of burgundy cluster flowers.

At the front of our property there is a hedge of trees. The first time I drove down our long lane, my mind's eye knew that this tree line also needed a hedge of perennials. Eventually, I will be building a stone wall structure that will be grounded with shrubs to act as an 'entrance point' to our homestead, but for right now I have to get the perennials established. A split rail fence will also be incorporated.

I started the bed with a few orange day-lilies. I have since added some of the Sedum, black-eyed susans, cone flowers, lambs ear, and coral bells. I was worried that the ground would be tough to work, but as I dug and shook the dirt from the sod roots it was as if the ground itself was agreeing with my plans, happily turning in all the weeds and pasture grass for the promise of flowers. Little by little I'll keep extending this flower bed, adding plants as I get them. I'd love to plant some Crepe Myrtil, Butterfly bushes, and Beauty Berry in this spot too.

When I first moved in last September, I moved with a mint plant. Knowing that mint can turn into an invasive species, I quickly dug a hole along the woods on the east side of our property so it could winter over. This spring I rediscovered it and all the 20 little runners it had already sent out. I cleared a small area around it and one thing lead to another and I made an impromptu flower bed here too. (Which is also where I suspect I found some poison oak.) I had some left over black-eyed susan's so they found a temporary home here as well. I would love to naturalize the edge of the woods to the lawn in the future.

Tomorrow morning, after I run some errands, it's back out into the garden. This time to get some more veggies planted. We had another cool streak and only my spinach and leaf lettuce decided to make an appearance. The weather man is predicting warmer weather to stick around this weekend and into next week so hopefully some germination will be taking place.