Over the past two or three seasons I have been working on the very front edge of my yard. As many of you may recall from either previous posts or my lectures, I have always neglected the very front of our property , in part due to the fact that gardening on the street leads t o interruptions of pleasant conversation and no work gets done and in part due to the fact that I am not a large fan of  the front of our house ( boring cement stairs, icky front door I can’t change or paint another color because of the blazing afternoon sun, lack of trim work etc etc etc). But after realizing how much it would cost to do the renovations I would like to change the facade I set aside my indifference to the front garden and got to planning.

I decided it would be neighborly to plant highly fragrant plants along the sidewalk so started with the area in front of the dogs fence. Lavender, fragrant tall phlox, bee balm and thyme line the 2 feet between us and the asphalt. Then after the fence ends begins the lilac walk I have dreamed of since we moved here . Lilacs ‘Charles Joly’ and ‘Sensation’ start off the line, leading into a string of Lilac ‘Tinkerbelle’ which is a compact grower that won’t block the little garden in front of the porch from sight, then two old fashioned white ones taken from cuttings that will eventually grow very tall. Interspersed in here are several Rosa rugosa ‘Alba”  which smell of cloves, a clematis or two, and caryopteris for the late season. All of this is underplanted with forget me nots and pink coreopsis.

As you get down the sidewalk and are at the edge of my driveway I widened the garden bed  to include an already growing red horse chestnut tree  Aesculus x carnea ‘Briotii’ and added two roses, ‘Julia Child’ and Sunny Knockout, two more clematis , 4 different peonies, helenium, gallardias, alliums,  geraniums and sedum. For the spring I planted a bag of mixed daffodils, muscari, camissia, and squill. We added a large rock we dragged from the side yard on one of the kid’s old sleds atatched  the mower Wil was driving with me pushing and holding the rock  from behind ( see, front yard  gardening is scary, that could have ended up on youtube!)   I had received  a cute little planter from my brother and sister-in-law for my birthday so I placed it in the garden  last spring  and dropped  in a pot of pansies I picked up at Lowes of all places.  I usually add pansies to my planters and window boxes in April, then they get leggy and melty with the heat and I pitch them, This batch unfortunately fried from neglect so never even got the chance to annoy me , and I  replanted the container and forgot about them…until late last summer.

Apparently this sweet little pansy had taken it upon itself to reseed , and it did so in a straight line down the edge of the sidewalk. It was very cute, and they bloomed all fall and I even pressed many of the blossoms.  Now on to the surprise they had in store for me, this sweet little flower seeded everywhere in the bed and it is winter hardy! I found the label , and it is viola Sorbet XP Marina, a cross that provided a plant that is super compact and will not get leggy like other pansies , is very heat tolerant, will reseed   and is extremely cold tolerant as well.  I had planned in my scheme for the garden’s ground cover  to use viola corsica which has all of those same characteristics, but is  difficult to come by in the nursery trade, I ordered several plants  in February from Annies Annuals and they arrived yesterday so I added them to the mix. All in all it is a pretty complete season spanning garden and I will add more photos as everything starts to fill out and bloom.

Today, on a whim  ,my friends and I  went out yard-saling and I found  a lovely cement bird bath  at an estate sale and bought it for next to nothing and as that went from the trunk into the the front garden  I realized how happy I was to actually have a front garden , which was the  nicest surprise of all!