Planting Bulbs

What a lovely time of year! As I am wrapping up my garden one of my tasks is to plant spring bulbs which always invokes feelings of positive anticipation and makes me look forward to next year when the little surprises will poke their sunny little heads up in my garden.

Here are some steps to getting the most out of your bulbs:

1.  First, place your bulbs.  I usually plant in natural looking groups throughout the garden.

2.  Rake the bark mulch away and dig the soil to below the proper depth for your bulbs to allow room for organic soil amendment.  This helps to improve the drainage crucial for bulbs and adds nutrients.

3.  Add compost soil amendment and bulb fertilizer to ensure healthy and robust bulbs.

4.  Place your bulbs at the proper depth, tips up, roots down and sprinkle with a little more fertilizer, add more compost, fill with native soil and rake your bark mulch back over. 

5.  Look forward to the spring display!

Other hints and tips: Remember that deer love tulips so only plant them where they are protected from the deer.  Otherwise Daffodils, Narcissus, Alliums, Crocus, Hyacinth, Muscari, Frittilaria, Glory of the Snow, Miniature Iris, Siberian Squill and more.  Check out Deer Resistant Bulbs for more info and remember to stop by your local nursery.

Landscape Design Projects 2013

Since I have posted since forever, you must all be wondering what have I been up to?  Quite a lot it seems.  Below are some of the projects I have been doing this year, enjoy!

Water Feature, NE Bend

The backyard was more or less a rock shelf covered in Juniper trees and shrubs which the owners had removed but were at a loss as to how to make their backyard into the beautiful and bird friendly paradise they wanted. 

See all those rocks?  I brought in about 12 yards of garden mix soil amendment plus 3/8" gravel fines to make paths as a first step.  That gave me a few inches of good soil for planting (no joke!  the owner rented a jackhammer to plant some of the shrubs and small trees!).

Next step was to build a water feature.  I love boulders and the challenge of designing with water. I received such great help from Ewing's in NE Bend, thanks Molly!

We were able to dig about six inches down for the basin, the rest I had to build up.

That pond liner material is so cool!  I have some left over and wondering what kind of Halloween costume I could make out of it...

The structure is coming along, quite a puzzle getting all those Oregon Mossy Rocks to fit together.

Wow, the water feature is finished and it is gorgeous!!!  I look forward to getting it planted and filling in around it.

The soothing sound of water...