Gardening With the Kids

The plants are waking up with the warmer weather and the yard work is beginning in earnest! On Saturday we hired a woman from our parish to prune our shrubs and lend advice. We spent the first entire hour simply making one loop around the house, discussing all our plants: this woman knows a lot! I worked alongside her for a subsequent three hours, most of the time with ~27-pound Mary on my back while Chris occupied John. Let me tell you, I was so sore the next day from all that stooping, squatting, and lifting!

Today I took the kids to a local nursery to buy some plants. For any of my local blog readers, I'd like to recommend Rountree Plantation Nursery. It is a professional nursery, one of those gems that hides in a ratty part of town--the way I think the best nurseries almost always do. The staff was friendly and approached me repeatedly to offer help. Absolutely everyone working there, even the lower level workers, was highly knowledgeable about plants, techniques, care, and design. The plants were organized well and were in fantastic shape. Everything looked vibrant and well-tended; none of the plants I bought were root-bound.

When we got home from the nursery, Chris set up my dirt mixing station.

I made three such big batches of dirt to amend into our dense red clay.

We planted various begonias in the kitchen window box, and they should grow about eight inches tall. I didn't take a "before" photo but envision old, dead dirt filled with weeds.

Before: The top of the driveway is home to a half dozen pink shrub roses. We recently had about eight tall trees cut down right behind this fence, so we're hoping the increased sunlight will allow those roses to finally start to fill out perhaps over the next two growing seasons.

I planted four clumps of white sweet alyssum. How I love the smell of that plant! It reminds me of my childhood.

If they get enough sun, they should fill out into large, fluffy clumps.

Before: This strip is to the left of the driveway, just above the mailbox. It contains some Liriope (Monkey grass), little grass-like plants with purple flowers, and Nandina.

This spot is one of the only places on our whole lot that gets full sun, so I planted an itty bitty rosemary bush.

If it survives, it should grow into a big, beautiful, lovely smelling shrub.

At the nursery, John picked out some mondo grass and asked if we could buy it. I wanted to cultivate his interest in gardening, and the plant was selling for $3 and seems to do well in the shade, so I bought it. I've since learned that I planted the grass wrong (see in the upper right, above the arc of hostas) and needed to separate out the sprigs and plant them a bit farther apart, so I'll go back and fix that.

Close up of mondo grass

For the last two years I have planted annual color spots on either side of the walkway to the front door. It is a tremendous amount of work to dig 40 little holds for begonia or impatiens. This year I decided to try one big plant on either side, something that would be a perennial and provide some interest, although likely would not be as colorful as vibrant annuals.

I chose Heuchera 'Amethyst Myst.' These holes were a bear to dig for several reasons: We were in the front yard, so I had to keep an eagle eye on my children so they wouldn't run into the street. The ground is hard packed. The ground is full of thick roots from the trees and rocks.

My hope is that the dark purple leaves against the light green shrubs against the dark green Otto Luyken laurel will look interesting.

And, yes, I did manage two little children for four hours of gardening all by myself! I involved them as much as possible (which quite challenged my levels of patience because you can imagine how well a three-year-old and one-year-old can follow directions when gardening). For about two critical sessions, I buckled Mary into the red wagon so she couldn't get into trouble. The kids got very, very messy. Toward the end I let them play with the hose, which was a big hit! Look at the joy on their faces!

After those four long hours, I took our bedraggled selves indoors, got us in clean, dry clothing, washed our hands, and plunked the kids in front of a DVD. I put the sound on low and dimmed the lights in expectation that they'd probably fall asleep for naps, which Mary did within ten minutes! Unfortunately, John never did, but that means I will be rewarded tonight with a boy who actually falls asleep around seven or eight o'clock.