No, I don’t have a magical super smart garden. I’m just lucky enough to be gifted an entire flower bed of plants, which I’m now calling “my gifted garden.”  Since we purchased a new construction house, we have a LOT of blank space to fill in our yard. I was chatting about this with a co-worker one day a few weeks ago and she asked if I was looking for any perennials to fill my yard. Free plants that will come back bigger and better each year?! You bet I was game! She told me to let her know when I was ready and we’d set a time for me to come to her house and help her “prune” her garden.

I was finally ready to take her up on the offer last week, so we picked an evening after work for me to come by and I showed up with a couple buckets, a shovel and gloves. I was so excited I actually beat her there, but I knew I was at the right house when I drove up and saw this amazing assortment of flowers.

Just to make sure I rang the doorbell and her husband answered. He was mighty confused when I said I was there for plants! She arrived a few minutes later, changed into yard garb and we set to work with shovels and a stash of plastic bags she brought out to hold the roots.   We chatted about what types of plants grew well and which liked particular exposures as we worked our way up one side of the bed and down the other. She’d ask if I wanted this or that, and I repeated that I’d take whatever she was willing to part with and give it a home to grow.

By the time we were done the back of my truck was a wall of plants. Both tubs I’d brought were full of bags and I had other bags tucked in between the tubs and on a small tray I had thrown in the truck just in case! And you couldn’t even tell we’d touched her garden!

Ok, so this IS the same picture as above, but it literally did look exactly the same from the road. It was only if you came in for a closer inspection that you’d see the areas we dug into.

Once I got everything home, I placed the bags around the flower bed so I could decide final placement for all of them and make sure that I spread things out. I watered everything in the bags since it was getting late and headed for bed. I wasn’t able to get them in the ground for a few more days but I kept watering the roots in the bags and most of the plants seem like they did ok.

A little fertilizer and some mulch and its done! It will look even better when the hydroseed is done next week and we finally have a lawn too.  I still need to add a line of pea gravel at the back along the house, just like we did out front and add some garden art, but I’m plenty pleased with my gifted garden. I’m anxious to see how it all comes back in next year. I’m hoping most will go to seed, spread a bit and come back even bigger next season. And hopefully, in a few years my gardens will be as established as my co-workers is now and I can ‘gift’ plants to others to continue the chain. 🙂  Here’s a few close ups of the flowers that survived transplant.