The moment I’ve been dreaming of has arrived- I have mulched the front garden. I know it’s not for everyone, but I love a tidy mulched look. 🥹 I opted for strulch because a.) it’s cheapest and b.) it will break down and feed the soil fairly quickly, and right now the soil up there needs it. We have had a really, really dry week and the soil was cracking despite how much I tried to keep it watered. So I needed to add some mulch to keep moisture in. It smells amazing and was so soft to work with. I just grabbed handfuls and scattered it around the beds. Then we had a nice heavy rain to hold it in place.

I am obviously going to add more plants to this, but it is really helpful to see clearly where I have room for new perennials. Around the stone path I will be adding more creeping varieties so that it becomes a full mat of flowers, but I am adding little by little to see what the slugs stay away from. Very surprisingly they are not touching the saxifraga, so I added some pink ones that I had growing in pots along with the white flowered variety. The iberis are doing okay, but they are getting a little slug damage and aren’t very suited to this type of look, our neighbors have some flowing over a low wall and i think that’s much nicer. Everything looks so much more vibrant against the mulch, and I have 3 bags left to do the patio beds next. 🙂

A couple new flowers are showing off this week, some aquilegia (or columbines) are freely popping up near the hedges in a beautiful soft pink. One of my camassia bulbs I planted in fall is just starting to flower in a stunning purple shade. No news from my iris yet, which is slightly concerning since there aren’t even buds. But my peonies have some buds and my neighbors are blooming now. So surely more is to come soon. 🥰

As a bonus, the heavy rain knocked down a ton of cherry blossoms that are now covering our patio! Seeing them float down was magical and I love being surrounded by pink. 🌸

Happy May!

Katy