Today I decided to clean our front yard flowerbed. This flowerbed has been giving me headaches because I can’t decide what to do with it. At first, it was full of summer annual flowers, then I had spring flowers in it, then a combination of spring bulbs and summer plants, but I’m just not pleased with it. It is located behind the grapevine and almost invisible during the summer, but if I leave it empty it looks really bad during the spring and autumn when the grapevine leaves fall off. Another problem with this bed is that I’m having a real problem keeping it tidy during the grapevine season. I can’t get inside the bed, so it usually looks a mess during July and August when I don’t clean it so I don’t disturb and break fruits.  

Today I decided to clean it anyway, grapes are almost ready for harvest so I can’t do much damage anymore. Birds are already starting to eat the grapes so I’ll soon be harvesting them. 

I had lots of weeds that covered the bed so I had to do a lot of weeding but also there were spring bulbs still in the garden. I was planning to leave them in the soil for next year, but I decided against it. I’ve pulled all of them out and now the flowerbed is practically empty. All that is left are my Curry plant, a couple of coneflowers, and a hollyhock bush. 

Last autumn I’ve planted over 150 spring bulbs. I bought a spring mix that contained alliums, daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, irises, and Muscari. I have a feeling that half of the bulbs were left in the ground and that I will be pulling the bulbs out next year. There are many baby bulbs that grew so I can’t count them and honestly I have no idea which bulb is which. I know for some of them, but others have very similar bulbs and there’s no way I’d guess which variety they are.

I’ve damaged a few of the bulbs but luckily it’s mostly the ones that can be propagated by division so there’s no real damage.

I’ve decided against planting these bulbs in the front yard and I’ll make a new flower bed in the vegetable garden. I have a nice empty space on top of the garden, which I don’t use for sowing vegetables because the soil is not good and the vegetables grown on this part are really poor. Bulbs, on the other hand, shouldn’t mind and they could grow nicely. 

I’ll deep dig into this part of the garden in the next couple of weeks and prepare the bed for the bulb planting. I should find a way to keep the bulbs from going too deep so I’ll probably use some kind of net in the ground to keep them close to the surface since I don’t plan to dig them out every summer. 
I’ve already ordered a bunch of new bulbs for this bed and I’m waiting for them to arrive. I’ll be planting them in September, maybe early October so I need my bed ready by that time. 

As for my front yard flower bed, I decided I will buy a couple of tall shrubby and a few creeping plants that will keep this part of the garden full. I still haven’t decided which ones. I have to be careful with what I choose because this part of the garden gets very hot during the summer but also the grapevine and neighbors’ trees keep it in the shade. Also, I can’t have plants with giant roots because there’s a manhole box under the flowerbed so anything too big could dry and die. I’d like something that I could prune during the spring and won’t need to touch during the summer. 
I’ll have to choose these plants soon because I plan to buy them before the winter. 

Once I finish this part of the garden I still have 3 more parts to finally do up. Scarp will be home to a rock garden which I have wanted to do for years, side flowerbed needs maintenance and some new plants and I want to make a big forest flower garden on the left side of my vegetable garden. But, I’m taking things one by one. Maybe in a couple of years, I’ll finally have my dream garden.