New Veggie Beds and a Pollinator Garden

The client lives in zone 8a/b and wanted to start an easy veggie patch where she and her family could enjoy fresh eating throughout the spring and summer. She also wanted to reinvigorate life into one-side of the house where only boxwoods lived. Since the client is a joyful birder she wanted to extend her support of the ecosystem to the bees and butterflies by installing an easy low maintenance pollinator garden. To meet these goals we created two spaces, a veggie patch and the pollinator garden, even though every garden space is for the pollinators! For the veggie patch we cleaned up an easy to get to area in the backyard, cleared plant debris and installed two garden beds, two pots, one green stalk and seeded flowers behind the veggie beds. We filled the veggie beds with flowers, and herbs to diversify her veggie bed ecosystem and will place hybrid and disease resistant varieties of tomatoes and peppers after the last frost. The greenstalk was completely seeded with varietal lettuce blends for fresh salads throughout the year. For the pollinator garden, we ripped out all the boxwoods which took care of our tilling for us. We then blended in coco choir for additional aeration of compact soil. We installed part shade to full sun flowers; begonia, cosmos, phlox as well as lambs ear and beautiful butterfly bush as the center piece. Once plants were installed we seeded wildflower seeds throughout the area and installed trellises away from the house for vining flowers and vertical interest. And finally, to make southern gardening a little more breezy, we installed irrigation with different emitters in the veggie beds and greenstalk and connected a sprinkler system for the pollinator garden.