Design

I like to encourage folks to think about the views from their windows and front doors, as they're planning their gardens and landscapes (in programs that I do in my work). In spite of it being 'low-maintenance,' we weren't happy with just mulch and stone outside our front door in our mountain house. (No green welcome and nothing to check, enjoy, and tend....Hrrmph, is what we thought.) front before raised beds (after planting of sedums) So we started planting in earnest a year and a half ago. I'm so enjoying the view this evening out the front door.  The sunny meadow border in front has taken its spring form, with early-flowering Penstemon digitalis (Husker's Red) is surrounded by Liatris , Eurybia (Aster) , Penstemon , Helianthus , and Vernonia (Ironweed) vegetative shoots. front door view in the mountains It's so lovely to see the transformation.  It wasn't difficult to do, at all, and reflects a couple of years of growth.  And my gardening companion...

We've had a lot of fun creating garden space in our "low-maintenance" landscape in the mountains. sedum beds, perennial meadow, and raised beds for vegetables Hmm. We couldn't help but plant natives below the slope, establish raised beds for my vegetables, and work on a meadow/perennial bed in front (not to mention the sedum bed, hemlocks, rhododendrons, and others).  It's becoming a landscape that's fun and rewarding.

Potted carnivorous plants The small bog near our mountain house (with various pitcher plants and venus fly traps) didn't get enough sun to do well, so we converted it to sedums today. The carnivorous plants were transplanted to a tall glazed ceramic pot and the peat was excavated and stockpiled for other projects. My gardening companion reworked the bed, fishing out the plastic underlying the bog, and improved the drainage. Expanded sedum bed I transplanted lots of offshoots from the existing sedum bed (on the left) and with an addition of a large purple Madrona sedum in the center,  I'm hopeful that it will thrive.

Our sedum bed continues to provide a diversity of colors and textures. It's jewel-toned in morning and evening light, and now, in mid-spring, many of them are starting to flower. Flowers are merely a bonus in a group that encompasses plants that are tough, drought-tolerant, often perennial, and which have leaf shapes of all sorts.