My Whimsical Garden Part 2

As you know, I’m still working on my whimsical garden. (My Whimsical Garden Part 1) So now it’s time for Part 2…

One of my goals is for my back yard to be drought-friendly as well as whimsical. There already isn’t much grass, so I feel like I’m saving water there. But I can’t just leave it all dirt either, because dirt in itself is not very whimsical. So during the summer I went shopping for plants that either A) I have always liked, B) we had when I was growing up, or C) had tags on them that said “drought resistant”.

These are the alyssums when they were babies…I have always liked alyssum because they smell like honey. I forgot what the other plant is called but was assured it was drought-friendly!I guess alyssum can grow fine in poorly drained soil. This is probably the worst place to plant anything in my whimsical, drought friendly back yard. Above you can see what happened when I accidentally left the soaker hose on for over 4 hours…(I waited until most of the water had drained off before taking the picture. You don’t leave your soaker hose on for over 4 hours and then post a picture of it online when you are in California during a major drought! Just saying.)Then today it rained, and it seems like all the water that runs off my roof goes directly into my poorly drained flowerbed…you can see the drought friendly one might be a little too wet!

I have always liked geraniums and marigolds. You can see how the marigolds are doing much better than the first time I showed them to you. We had lantanas in our yard as kids, (it took me forever to find the name of them online). What I like about them is that each flower looks like a little bouquet by itself and they come in various colors.

Then my sister gave me 4 suncatchers for my birthday, which look very whimsical and the colors actually attract hummingbirds.

I finished another Talavera style pot, but so far haven’t planted anything in it.

I got the fox at Home Goods, and am slowly introducing foxes into my whimsical decor. Not because foxes are “in” right now, but because of a book I found when Mark was in hospice. I’ll do a post about that eventually, but here is a picture of the cover to give you an idea. Below are some more random photos from around the yard.