New rock wall flower bed

Well, not exactly a new flower bed, but an improved one. :-) This was an old bed above a rock wall, at the base of a steep slope on the edge of the backyard. It was filled with purple spirea, pinks, bee balm, and weeds… We’ve been working on it for the past couple of days, and I moved everything out of it, added fresh soil and bark and a new layer of rocks behind the bed, and planted a few annuals in it. I left some clumps of the evergreen dianthus hanging over the wall, and added mums, dahlias, feather flowers, treasure flowers, gallardia, petunias, two different colors of penta flowers, red vinca, verbena, and other annuals. It looks kind of sparse right now, we need to plant more grass at the base of and behind it. Next year, I’ll fill it with flowers earlier in the season, and it will be much fuller.

I also planted two new small miniature rose bushes in the wall bed, a pink and white bicolor, and a solid white one. I may leave these here only temporarily, they seem very delicate in the full sun in this bed. I usually grow miniature roses only in containers, but decided to add these to help fill in this bed. I’ll see how they do here for a while, and move them if they don’t do well.

Here are a few photos I took yesterday, including one of my evergreen red hibiscus. The first photos at the top of this post are of the bed itself (the bed is about 25′ in length), the others are the individual flowers within the bed. Click thumbnails for larger sized photos.

How to build a stone wall in your garden