Garden Design Implementation: Phase 1 of eleven - billionty

Last weekend (as in the 7th), I got some grand idea that I would start on my garden re-design. It was mostly because one of the irises I had bought was starting to turn entirely brown and so I wanted to get it in the ground.  Of course, in order to get it into the ground, I needed to have a place to put it so out to the yard to rip up a bunch of grass, horse herb and weeds I went.

First, I planned - using my plan, a measuring tape, some bike spokes and a tie down nylon, I laid out the areas where the plants were supposed to go.

It Begins...

After laying down the nylon, I started digging up grass (which also included digging up some stepping stones that I had forgotten where there).

Mid-project

Of course, ideally, I would have put the rain barrel on cinder blocks as per my resolutions list (which is actually part of the reason for delaying doing this part of the implementation), but I found out the downspout is riveted so that means we have to break the rivet before doing anything.  I may end up having to hire this out since I don't want it to look like crap when we're done with it.  As I got to the artemisia plants by the rain barrel, I just planted them in their new location.

Planted

I re-laid the nylon, dug up some of the Mexican Petunia to plant in the back and then cut it back by about a third or so (though one of the plants I should have cut it back even more - the reason behind doing this is so that the plant has the resources to put into root development without having to support all the greenery and flowers).  Since I didn't want to dig up more artemisia, there's an empty corner which I ended up planting some tulip bulbs - don't know if they'll sprout since they're really, really, really old.

A different angle

I predict right now that the biggest problem is going to be controlling the artemisia and petunia enough to let the irises get established since both will take over if allowed.  I may end up using some rocks from the rock area that I'm getting rid of to line the area because as of right now, I still have the nylon and bike spokes out there delineating the edge of the bed.

After finishing this, I went and tackled the mess that is the spotted spurge I started at the deck and started working toward the garden.  I got to about the tree before I had to take a break to eat something.  And that was when I realized I had spent 6 hours straight doing yard stuff.  Talk about going down the rabbit hole.

Now then, all I have to do is finish the rest of the yard...