Building a Flower Garden

My son took me to Lindley’s Nursery in New Smyrna Beach the other day and I picked up some flowering plants for the yard. (More about Lindley’s further down the page.)

I’ve been saving cardboard boxes to use as grass killers in the yard. It is not that easy to kill Florida grass and weeds, but this type of thing works very well in New Hampshire! Haha… I’m not there, I’m here, so we used the rototiller.

Step Two

Dig up the grass, roots, and dollar weed (ugh) and pull it all out. (There is no way to remove all the dollar weed.) This leaves a sandy “dirt” to which I added a bag of store bought soil. (We buy our dirt, compost, and mulch from The Yard Shop in New Smyrna.)

creating a new flower garden — Nearly done with the garden

Plant the Shrubbery

I had four plants to put into the space and I planted them back a bit to leave room for something in the front. Also, I’m not sure how big they will become. I used a piece of the cardboard to kneel on while planting.

These plants came from Lindley’s Nursery in New Smyrna Beach. I was so impressed with the upgrades they had done to the place since my last visit (quite a white ago). I would have stayed longer because the grounds were beautiful and they had so many wonderful plants, but I was with my son who was not into plant shopping.

I grabbed some flowering things that seemed to attract bees (if the bees are on the plants while shopping, it’s a good indication!). All the Florida native plant names totally left my head, but I will probably go back at a later date to find more plants. They did not have any native milkweed because I asked. It was sold out – and there was no sign – so I’m not sure which type they were selling. I hope it was not the tropical milkweed.

I’ve never grown any of theses plants before.

Flowering Rudbeckia plant — Rudbeckia plant

The Garden is Finished!

The digging began early in the morning to beat the sun. I have until around 9:00am until this area becomes sunny. I did have to finish with the mulch and do the watering in the sun, but at least the digging was finished.

Planting Tips

For each plant I added to the garden, I included some bone meal, crab meal, earthworm castings, and compost. All these things should help improve the soil and keep the plants happy for now. I used these amendments because I had them, but bone meal only would have been fine for now. (All links are Amazon affiliate links.)

A couple of the plants were very root bound, so I disturbed the roots by pulling them a bit to keep them from being tight. This helps them to grow outward instead of round and round like they had to do in the pot.

All the soil amendments I mentioned above were mixed with the ground soil once the plant was in its place. After planting, each plant was soaked with water, and once the mulch was added, I watered them all again.