The Bad and Ugly, Part 4

Welcome to Part 4 of the Bad and Ugly garden blog series. First I'll summarize what I've covered so far with Bad and Ugly Parts 1-3.

• Part 1 - Dead plants in the compost bed.


• Part 2 - More dead plants in the shady backyard bed.


• Part 3 - Wimpy azaleas in the front porch bed.

Part 4 takes on the pool pump bed that lies between my bedroom window and a winding garden path. This bed gets a good dose of midday sun and could be beautiful. The only this is, I haven't done a darn thing with it. Until now. This bed is my BIG autumn project. Here is my plan.

I inherited a bed of purple irises behind my porch swing that are in full shade. Those are getting moved to this garden path bed where I have a few of the same purple irises that bloom well. This bed also has a good showing of autumn ferns and purple heart that need to be cleaned up and arranged a little better. That takes care of the left side of the bed.

In the middle of the bed is a Lady in Red hydrangea that I plan to leave there. Earlier this year my husband accidentally cut it to the ground with the weed eater, so you can't really see it in these photos. It is growing back pretty good, so I think once I get all the grass and baby trees pulled out of here it will have a good chance to survive. In the back of the bed, I'm thinking of a few things. I have a purple clematis Franziska Marie that isn't blooming where it is planted. It needs to move to a location where it gets more sun. It might look nice on some type of metal trellis between the two windows. I'm also considering a butterfly bush because I love them.

That brings us to the pool pump. Ugh. It is ugly, so we want to cover it a bit. Last week it was surrounded by azaleas. The plan is to put up some type of fence, a picket fence, around the pool pump. We needed some room to do that, so I moved two of the azaleas. See the holes? There is still a third azalea that needs to be moved.

I plan to do lots of work on this bed this weekend. Because of all the overgrown grass I've been trying to wait for a weekend cool enough for me to wear jeans while I worked. Anyone who has tried to pull weeds and grass from an overgrown bed in shorts knows that the mosquitoes will eat you alive! Your legs will be scarred for months.

Where did I move the azaleas, you ask? Well I moved them to the Bad and Ugly Bed 2 (which is looking tons better, I think). I took the first photo right after I moved them. I took the second photo this morning, after a nice rain.

Visit again this weekend! You'll see some progess (I hope!!) in the iris garden path bed.