A summer flower garden, flower garden, big flower garden, and an English flower garden were on the top of my Pinterest search history for months when I knew that I would be buying a house several years ago. I saw many posts with pictures of full gardens with towering flowers, flowers lining rock walls and fences, and dense cutting gardens. When I bought this house I knew that my front yard would be where I could experiment with flowers. The front yard is very small, so I knew it would be a good place to attempt to replicate those pin-worthy images.
For seven years I tried different plants that I bought from Lowes or Walmart. I had a hydrangea at one point, dahlias, and even some sunflowers that got up to 9 feet tall. But in all that time I never had the full garden experience that I was hoping for.
In the spring
Before planting in the garden, Bennett had found a Facebook marketplace post for free stones and he lined the front garden with it beautifully. As a side note, he worked incredibly hard, having to take apart a stone structure to bring the pieces home. It made me want to double my efforts of getting the lush garden I had dreamed of.
Frugal Living Tip: If there is something that you want for decor or yardwork, always check the free section on Facebook Marketplace and try different variations of what you’re looking for in the search bar. For this, we had looked up garden stones, stones, rocks, garden rocks, and garden edging.
I decided to use a birthday gift card to buy a bag of giant zinnia seeds from Amazon. The bag I bought is no longer available but these are what I will buy next year. I used about a half ounce of zinnia seeds spread over this garden space. The package I got was a 1-ounce package containing approximately 3000 seeds, and I used about half of the package.
Earlier in the spring I had started some purple amaranth seeds. I had never seen amaranth before but when I had searched for easy flowers to grow, these came up as an option. These were listed as able to grow up to 6 feet tall but let me tell you. We had some that grew up to ten feet.
So I put a few of those seedlings in the back of the garden bed and dropped in sunflower seeds that I had saved from last year and a few different varieties that Bennett had bought me from Floret Flowers.
At the beginning of summer
These photos were all taken about two weeks apart and go from the end of June to the last photo I took on the first day in November after I cleaned out the garden.
This first photo was taken two weeks after I planted all of the zinnia seeds. We were leaving for an extended family vacation and I was sure there would be growth so I was excited to take a picture to compare.
My sister took care of the house while we were gone and even though she was telling us that the garden had taken off, we did not expect this. Almost two weeks after vacation, we came home to this:
While it doesn’t seem like anything special, it was already more full than anything I had done in this garden before. As the flowers grew we got more excited by the fullness of the garden bed. Ellanor became excited to talk about her flowers.
Family Forging Tip: Take every opportunity to converse with your kids. Bennett and I actively conversed about our garden all summer so we included Ellanor in it. We talked about the growth with her and used it as an opportunity to practice counting and color recognition.
Midsummer
We did cut a lot of these zinnias for floral arrangements and next year I will do even more. The one thing that I think I will do differently next year is be more diligent about spreading the seeds out. When I plant them I need to be willing to either thin them out as they come up or transplant some of the hardier ones so that there is a more even spread of the flowers as they bloom.
Eventually, this garden bed got hit with powdery mildew and I’m not sure what I can do to treat it. I know that it was a problem because of how densely the garden was sown. Still, I don’t want to sacrifice the denseness, so I will do the same next year. If you have any suggestions for powdery mildew treatment, please let me know in the comments below! While this last photo is so dreary compared to the middle of summer, it’s a reminder that this is a blank space that I can try to do more with next year.
Summer’s end
I will be looking at these photos for inspiration for next year. Also for encouragement that even though it might take me a few years if I work towards a goal, I can get results that I’m pleased with.
Save it for inspiration later!
