Our local cemetery started a memorial garden that I've been working on throughout the summer. I started by planting annuals and then expanded with perennials, grasses, and shrubs, plants that either I bought or brought from my own gardens. I've gotten many compliments on my work, and I do my best to keep it weeded, though with my job my time and energy always seems to be spent, plus I have my own gardens to take care of. I'm already thinking of expanding, but I'll let what is out there grow and see how it does through the winter. So far it's doing well, the rain we've had has really helped the plants to establish.
With the sandy soil and rabbits and deer, I have to be choosy as to which plants to grow out there, and some of those are salvias. I planted the annual red flowering saliva in the spring but the deer or rabbits kept eating them down to the ground, except for one patch by the arbor. So I know I can't grow those. But the perennial ones they haven't touched so far (Carodonna, Rose Queen, and Transylvanian sages). They haven't touched any of the perennials, actually, except for a little nibbling on the phlox. I have spread Milorganite around the plants so maybe that has helped deter them, since I read critters don't like the smell.
