Well, I finally got the new oval bed (about 10 ft by 7 ft) that got carved out of the front lawn ( yeah!) planted. It is in mostly sun now, because we cut down a giant tree. Many of you had good ideas for what to plant there. The front garden is still rather formal, with a lawn surrounded by flower beds, and a stone wall at the street. So, I went out and bought a 36" Peach Drift standard and put it in the middle of the new bed (to my amazement after 2 weeks it is covered in bloom, and seems very happy). Then I remembered that I had an assortment of roses languishing in pots, and some of them were polyanthas. I planted 4 of them around the standard rose. Rest of the area is now covered with purple "million bells" miniature petunias - they grow well here, as long as there is sun. I am going to put in some daffodil bulbs, too. There are also 3 sort of sandstone looking irregular flat stepping stones for kneeling on when weeding. I plopped a big pot full of white & pale blue tiny trailing flowers whose name I can't remember on one of them to hide the naked standard trunk from the front path (sounds horrid but it actually looks nice).

The roses are a Margo Koster, a Mignonette, and a Henry Walker Mignonette, and a mystery. The mystery was planted out by the street in its own little flower bed my DH made for it with bricks, and its very own emitter. After 4 years it had achieved 3 inches in height and was miserable. When I went to look for it, I thought it might have died, but it hadn't, so I moved it to the new bed with stern instructions that this was its last chance! Somehow my brain thought it must be a miniature, or a poly, as it was so pathetically small. Anyway, it sat there without doing anything while the other roses were putting out new leaves, and even all bloomed! Yesterday I noticed one teenie, tiny new leaf on it. The funny thing is that we are sorting out our file cabinet, and I found some paperwork on when I probably ordered it & planted it originally. The paperwork says it is Opal Brunner, which gets 10 feet high! I have another Opal Brunner that I ordered at the same time, which has gotten at least 7 feet high, and is happy. So, if the mystery lives and really is OB, I should be able to tell when it blooms. Then i will have to dig it up and move it again! I am still hoping that my paperwork is wrong, and it is another Mignonette or some other more suitable rose. I must admit I love this sort of thing - my gardening is very haphazard. Even when I tried to be good and plant a new bed on purpose I ended up focusing on finding homes for orphans I already had, and saving roses that were languishing elsewhere in the garden.

I will post pictures of the bed after my tiny mystery has gotten bigger.

Jackie