Nine years ago we decided to fix up an old house with a large overgrown yard in a historic town 90 miles from our home. The one acre yard was overgrown with trees and brush and we concentrated on that for several years. The biggest problem was Euonymus fortunei which had grown up into many trees and even killed some of them. I grow a lot of flowers where I live but every time I planted flowers in the new location they met with catastrophe. The person mowing the grass often thought they were weeds. The front yard had a chain link fence with 2 1/2 feet of space between it and the sidewalk. I tried mulching the space but it still grew lots of crab grass and the moles loved the space and continuously dug it up. A year ago this spring I decided I was going to plant flowers there because I wanted to hide the fence and no one ever went in that space with tools. I had a large patch of Monarda Jacob Cline so I took starts about the size of my hand and put it every 10 ft. The space is 150 ft long. I bought Liatris bulbs, Echinacea and Asclipsia tuberosa bare roots at Wal-Mart and planted them every 10 feet also. I have a lot of garden phlox seedlings and I transplanted them and several plants that are somewhat invasive into the space. I often buy packets of seed for anything that strikes my fancy and I took all the seeds I had accumulated and sprinkled them in the space. I wanted to attract pollinators. I sprinkled breaded poppy seeds that grew and coriander seed that flowered and attracted a lot of pollinators. I planted Oenothrra speciosa seeds all along the front of the space and they grew and filled in any empty space and bloomed all summer. I transplanted cleome seedlings about every 10 feet as well as annual milkweed seedlings. When the nurseries closed out their summer annuals I bought a lot of things that did well such as ageratum, melampodium and salvia. It was colorful all summer. Last fall I planted daffodils, tulips, crocus and alliums. Only a few of the tulips bloomed which I blamed on the moles. I had transplanted larkspur seedlings that bloomed and I left them to provide seed for this year. I planted Adenophera and Campanula as well as Conoclinium coelestinum from my garden. I transplanted Sweet Rocket last fall and they provided some early flowers this spring. This spring I planted gladiolus bulbs and some dahlias against the fence but everything has grown so much more than I had anticipated that the glads are starting to bloom but they are in back of other taller flowers and are not noticable. If I have flowers that fall over I can tie them up to the fence which works well. There are so many flowers that I don't have many weeds. This spring because of Covid 19 we have only been up there a few times. My daughter lives in the town and she checks on it for me. When I go up I remove plants that are finished blooming and cut everything back that encroached on the sidewalk. I can be ruthless. This spring I decided to plant sunflowers behind The fence to expand the border. They are growing like weeds and should bloom soon. The planting has exceeded all of my expectations.
