Hydrangeas in My Garden

  First I have to say, happy (official) first day of Summer!  One of my favorite things to do is to watch my garden grow. (I just aged myself by 30 years...oh well.)  Seeing everything start to take off and really flourish is so rewarding.
 
  Today I have two tips for planting or designing a flower bed that are really simple and will save you some headache (and heartache) later on.
1.  Look to see what kind of sunlight your garden gets.  Is it full sun (8 + hours) or part sun or both?  This will make a huge difference in the type of plants you get and where to place them.
2.  Once you purchase your plants place them in the spot where you want them while they are still in their buckets.  Don't plant them right away.  Sit back and see if the color goes, if it gets as much or as little sun as it needs.  Take a couple of days to decide.

  We mostly have full sun in our backyard.  While this is great for growing a vegetable garden it's not when you want to grow flowers and other more shade friendly plants.  After we trimmed up our lilac bushes we noticed that we had a part sun area!  WOOOOHOOOO!  See how excited I am.  Now I am finally able to have hydrangeas.

Here are the beauties in my cart at The Home Depot:

Here is a before:

  I really wanted to add some color to this area.

Here is after:

  Next to the giant lilac bushes they look dinky but they are actually quite huge.
Now I have some gorgeous flowers to look at after my lilacs are done blooming.