The water tank flower bed
In the "lots of work" category for this year, there's something I hadn't posted yet but that was still worth a look: the flower bed above the water tank.
That's what the corner in front of the house at the left of the garden's gate used to look like:
... basically a privet hedge (some of which were either dead or dying), a hydrangea and a snowball tree - very lovely in Spring according to the former owners but that had two major downsides: it was covered in scale insects and was partially blocking sunlight to the window just behind it. In addition, the area was covered in various weeds.
In August 2010, we started removing the privets, which were replaced with yet another hydrangea (that used to be in what is now the vegetable garden), a mahonia and a snowberry. Two other hydrangeas (also from the vegetable garden) were planted behind the snowball tree.
Then, in Autumn, big problem: when the various contractors were getting ready to do the work we needed them to do, we discussed the location of the water tank with the master builder and the earthwork contractors. And that lead to a change of plan: it would be more appropriate for the tank (which was initially supposed to end up buried under the carport) to be located... under the snowball tree (because this is were the rainwater pipes are). So, we had to move everything we had planted there so far, and give up on the snowball tree: it was too big to be relocated. As for the hydrangea which was already there, we couldn't unearth it, as most of its roots were under the concrete path. The rest (mahonia, snowberry and hydrangeas) was put into pots.
The earthwork contractor came near the end of December during a snowfall.
Big machine, isn't it?
That's what they installed:
I dug the soil in March. It was horrible: huge pieces of slate everywhere, along with some concrete blocks and some mostly unidentifiable junk. Anyway, I was able to plant the hydrangeas and the "hedge-to-be" again. I added a few rhododendrons that were vaguely surviving in other parts of the garden.
I started adding more plants in early April: a variegated foliage rhododendron, a fuchsia (f. magellanica), a creeping ceanothus, as well as some small(ish) perennials: moss phlox, wood-sorrels, spiderwort, astilbe, maiden pink, daylily, pasque flower, carex buchananii and globe flower.
The idea was to do that over some time:
It was definitely looking better in mid-April, and everything I had planted had survived.
It improved rather suddenly after that, as a colleague of mine gave me a bunch of rosebushes which had to be planted as soon as possible. Five of them ended up above the water tank!
I added some ground cover a few days later: tickseed, gypsophila, crossworts and Convolvulus sabatius.
It is definitely looking better now:
Now I need to wait until everything's grown a bit to know whether I need to plant a few more things or not.
Garden update
A few pictures taken yesterday that show how some areas of the garden that have already been featured here are evolving (heh, I'm not going to reveal "secret" areas about which I haven't had the time to post yet, am I? 
)
Contrary to my rather pessimistic expectations, there's some stuff that looks like it's growing. Some salads are visible along the shed, but they're being eaten by sparrows 
Then there's an unused area onto which I'm going to plant both tomatoes and courgettes; after that, I have some potatoes which are starting to sprout but that I need to earth up some more, and two lines of various peas, then finally a line of beans I sowed last week-end but that haven't sprouted yet.
The ceanothus is full of various insects and their buzzing can be heard from rather far. As for the sea thrift, it's quite lovely as well.
Irises have flowered, and ornamental garlics are starting to bloom.
A few flowers are starting to appear there as well.
If sparrows devour all salads in the vegetable garden, we'll still have some here!
It's improving!
Eye candy again
Today no narrative featuring one of the twelve labours of Julie, just a few pictures, as eye candy...
Chives
What I put below the balcony
There's a balcony leading to the door on the front side of the house. When we bought it, there was a "clump" under that balcony- or, more realistically, an area covered in weeds and small, ugly shrubs that survived there for some reason. The only relatively notable items: a forsythia and some variegated ivy that covered the wall.
The main problem with the forsythia was that there was another on the other side of the path, and when both were growing merrily, it was impossible to pass without a machete! In addition, I like forsythias, but having two of them roughly at the same place was a bit of a waste. So, the first thing we did in the area last August was cutting off the forsythia that was close to the balcony.
Boom, forsythiashot! 
I must admit that I didn't do anything more there until Spring, as we had a lot to do inside the house. But at the end of March, I motivated myself to do some digging - which led to a few trips to the waste reception centre as I dug out various bottles (plastic or otherwise), bags, and even a few shoes... Then I installed various plants that had been more or less surviving in jardinières for years: a rosemary, a miniature rose bush, a skimmia, a carex, an oxalis, a moss phlox, a dianthus, an Aegean wallflower, as well as some trailing iceplant. I then bought a few more plants: a gaura, some Graham's sage, a lyre-flower, yellow bellflowers, a mazus, a nierembergia, a Grecian windflower, some doronicum, a blue fescue and a white and magenta hydrangea.
I also planted a few bulbous plants: lilies, gladiola and crocuses that used to be in a jardinière as well.
That's what it looked like in early April:
And that's how it looks like now:
Lilies and gladiola haven't sprouted yet, but I believe in them! I'm also going to add a few annual plants before this summer, so it looks less empty.
It should be nice in a few years!
The flower bed in the garage slope
When we finally bought the house last July, the flower bed in the garage slope looked somewhat like this:
Let's just ignore the old frame that used to hold some portal (but that just stayed there after the portal was removed), the ugly concrete fountain, the concrete slabs weighting about 80 kg each, the area covered in white gravel and the grape vine that had never been cut and that was so old it didn't produce any grape at all... Let's also ignore the garden gnomes, and the stairs that lead nowhere (well, they do - they lead to a glass panel that's part of the canopy... and that glass panel doesn't move at all). As for the paved area, that's another epic story.
The topic of this post is the flower bed on the left in the garage slope. It looks lush. Looking closer, however, it turns out that it's mostly thistle, dog's tooth grass, violets and mint! Also, you'll notice the really lovely frosted glass panels that close it on the side of the carport.
Here's what it looks like after a rather brutal cut into the grape vine:
We removed the glass panels during summer:
It looks cleaner now, but it's still rather ugly.
Manu tilled the soil and added compost, horse manure and loam in September and October. Only a few violets (which were close to the border and therefore rather hard to remove), a lily and a very rickety rhododendron survived. In November, I bedded a few more plants given by my in-laws:
There's a crape myrtle, and quite a few other plants I don't know the name of I'll need to have someone identify them for me.
I added a few other things this Spring:
An alumroot:
A lithodora:
Another rhododendron that was in another area of the garden:
A heath, a Cupid's dart, a larkspur, some aubretia, candytufts, wood-sorrels, another yucca, a cotoneaster, an herbaceous peony... and some Summer-blooming bulbs also ended up in the flower bed.
I happened to have a box of vegetable seeds given by my grandfather. A lot of the boxes and bags it contained had holes in them, so the bottom of the box contained an arbitrary mix of unidentifiable seeds. I sew them in the flower bed as well.
So yeah, I'm going to have a few salads and carrots in the flower bed. A little weird, but whatever.
I am planning on:
- repainting the carport because that particular shade of blue... ew! We already have the pain, but we haven't taken the time to do it yet.
- trying to grow a few climbing plants near the pillars (I'm thinking of some kind of jasmine and a rose bush), but that will have to wait until Autumn at the very least!
- adding even more plants to the flower bed itself, depending on how what is already there grows.
Eye candy
Today no narrative featuring one of the twelve labours of Julie, just a few pictures, as eye candy...
Columbine
Just for fun: the flower bed in front of the garden shed
First Summer. An urge to plant flowers (or anything, really) to cover various empty spaces. Some plants obtained from the school's roof garden. Holidays with the family and therefore more plants from various gardens, accompanied by even more relatively common plants found in the Massif Central.
The challenge - setting all that up in the middle of August (which was particularly dry last year).
A potential solution - the flower bed in from of the garden shed.
Original state: a small area covered with pine bark where a daylily and a bergenia are rather busy vegetating. I couldn't find a picture of the area in this state, however
First stage: removing the pine bark, digging, adding some loam.
The next step would be to plant whatever I can get my hands on: grape hyacinth bulbs, irises, a few ground covers (wild thyme, basket of gold, creeping broom, etc.), some plants (forget-me-nots, perennial geraniums...) and various wild stocks (bellflowers, mallows, scabiosa, etc.)
I also added very small marigolds. I didn't expect anything from them, especially not flowers, but I had to plant them somewhere...
In Autumn I added some more bulbs: ornamental garlic, botanic tulips. Looking good so far...
... and a first, happy surprise: although I planted it in August, the pot marigold bloomed, and only disappeared when it started freezing!
This Spring:
- a few forget-me-nots:
- botanic tulips:
- a lyre-flower I added in Spring to replace the mallow (which didn't survive):
The flower bed increased in volume - even the daylilies which were already there grew bigger, and I'm going to need to move them at some point. It looks rather promising for now: budding ornamental garlic, irises ready to bloom...
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