Herb Bed Reveal

Well, good morning.  Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday.  I meant to post this on Monday, but Eli (aka PAR-Dog) got very ill last Friday night and we've been dealing with him every since.  The good news is that he (finally) passed a small piece of plastic that he chewed off on one of his toys and he seems to be back to normal.  But he gave us quite a scare.

Here's the big reveal for the herb bed that my neighbor, Dotsie, and I recently built!  We live next door to each other in a zero lot-line community.  The south side of my house is next to her driveway.  It's basically the only sunny part of our lots because of the wonderful mature trees we have.  Here's the before:

I discussed this idea here

Here's the sequence:

Shrubs removed

Prep work for brick border

Footings poured

The border completed

Ready for planting!

We prepared the bed using Dianne's raised bed method:  a layer of bagged garden soil, a layer of shredded leaves, a layer of shredded newspaper, a sprinkling of worm castings, topped with another layer of garden soil.  We'll let this set all winter, do a soil test in early spring, amend if necessary, then plant.

The shrub that we left in the center is a beautiful gardenia that we just couldn't bear to remove, it's so happy there!

Here is Dotsie's front door.  See how the new herb wall ties in with her existing brick borders?  The the variegated lirope is echoed in her beds...

...and in mine.

We're really looking forward to playing with our new herb bed!  Some spring lettuce may be in our future as well!

Let me know if you need any masonry work done.  We were very pleased with this gentleman.