November 14, 2015

By the Breezeway

I spent Veterans Day gardening, revamping the bed in front of the breezeway. The bed isn’t very big, but it’s in a pretty prominent spot, right near the main entrance to our house—so I’d like it to make a good impression.

The first thing I did was add some fun features—a bird-nest-shaped birdbath and a big blue-glazed planter full of red cyclamen and Bright Lights Swiss chard. Both these items used to sit unnoticed in the backyard, so I moved them up into the spotlight.

Then I started doing some serious cleaning. Before I tackled it, the breezeway bed was a shaggy, messy place, with purple coneflowers, goldenrods, and wild petunias crowding around the big satsuma tree that serves as the bed’s centerpiece. Since I wanted a little tidier look, I dug all the wildflowers out and moved them to my meadow. Then I mulched the bed with leaves and planted eight coonties in the wildflowers’ place.

Coonties are neat little cycads—Florida natives. They form dense evergreen mounds about three feet tall. I chose them because they’re drought tolerant and easy to grow, because they’re a dapper shiny green, and because you never have to prune them.

I know it probably sounds like all I do these days is dig up my wildflowers, but I do appreciate them and I’ll be encouraging them just about everywhere in my yard except for a couple key places—the vegetable garden and this breezeway bed, areas I’d like to keep just a tad less wild and crazy.

I promise I’ll never give up on wildflowers, not just because they’re pretty but because they make such great habitat. My little meadow is the busiest place, full of native insects and lizards. I see box turtles and black racers there too. Hummingbirds visit in spring and summer, searching for nectar, and songbirds come in winter, searching for seeds.