Now, something not nursery related! (Although, we are very near completion of Nursery Phase 1… more posts on that in the near future…) This post is something I should have written up a year ago. But better late than never!

Do you remember when we dug up the ivy in our front yard? We found concrete planter boxes buried underneath the ivy and soil. Well, we decided to use them to plant some bushes in so that we had a nice line of plants along the walkway to the front porch. After consulting our garden expert (my mother-in-law) we decided to plant Skullcap, which is a flowering shrub which is native to this region. I had gotten a gift certificate to a local nursery for my birthday last February, so used it to buy enough Skullcap to line the two planters. Then, on a nice day in April last year, Kelly, my mother-in-law and the teenager got to work planting them.

First they got rid of all the weeds and roots in the planter beds

They lined them all up where they should be planted

Digging in

Jack helped

All planted and watered

Eventually, we’d love to break up that wide swath of concrete walkway with a more organic flagstone path. We love how wide the walkway is, it makes the house look so gracious.

Little did we know that when we planted them, we’d have a record-breaking drought over the summer, with over 100 days over 100 degrees and basically no rain.

But our little skullcaps were hardy plants! We didn’t water them a ton – just a good soak once every few weeks, like we did our Zoysia grass lawn (which is also adapted to high heat climates) – and they pulled through like champions. Only one plant died out of more than twenty that were planted.

A few months ago, my mother-in-law did a little guerrilla pruning and they began to bush out like crazy. Here’s hoping for some blooms this year!

All grown up!

Bushing out

Looking down the walkway

We only lost one plant over the summer