Sidewalk Garden, The Other Side

Last week I posted some pictures of our front sidewalk garden. This past weekend I moved ahead with my plans and put together the garden for the other side of the sidewalk. You can look at my last post to see the layout. As you can see in the above and below pictures on the yard side of the sidewalk there is only grass. Don’t get me wrong I like grass but I also like the idea of walking down a sidewalk surrounded by foliage and flowers. It’s not a significant reduction in mowing area but every little bit helps.

Here’s what I had before I made the garden bed. It’s a fairly straight sidewalk path leading from our driveway to our front door. It’s a fairly plain looking sidewalk and anything to dress it up a little will help.

You can see a slight bend in the sidewalk here. Hidden in the shadows of the house there are two rosemary plants that are across from our front steps. Rosemary can be great as an ornamental evergreen shrub as well as a culinary herb, at least here in Tennessee.

I gradually skimmed the sod from the top layer of soil. It was important to keep the grass root systems intact since this area has some pretty good grass. The grass clumps were transferred to another area of the yard in need of some of the greenery. I used the sidewalk sections as a guide and did one segment at a time with a width of 18-20 inches. I didn’t measure it or use a guide other than my eyes but I think I did a good job of keeping the lawn side edge even. I’ve used the garden hose trick before and that might have helped here. Just line the hose in the shape you want the bed to be and dig the area up to the hose.

The sidewalk bed ends at one of the rosemary plants where I tapered off the edge. I’ll be putting a stepping stone in between the two rosemary plants eventually but until then it will remain green grass.

Here are a couple shots of the sidewalk garden after I transplanted some plants into it. I moved my ‘Longin’ Russian sage as well as the ‘Little Spire’ Russian sage over. I also divided a ‘Stella de Oro’ daylily into three clumps and incorporated them into the garden. Even though my salvia cuttings were young the roots had already reached the bottom of the pots and I figured they would do fine here.

Yes that is a lonely petunia on the end. It should mound up pretty good and will be joined by other annuals in the future. Its two petunia buddies are on the other side of the walkway. I’m still debating on placing some Mediterranean heather on this side of the walkway. I picked up three more the other day at reduced rates. Their evergreen foliage looks great even without blooms.

On this end of the bed you can see the spirea that I moved. It was the same spirea that was infected with the aphids but it has recovered nicely due to two treatments of insecticidal soap and a follow-up visit by Dr. Ladybug. Her specialty is in treating aphid infections! She is currently at work on a viburnum in the backyard.