We finally got around to planting the empty raised garden bed on Elliott’s patio. This whole outdoor space is a work in progress – you might remember us planting his wall garden a couple months ago – so getting this bed planted is another big accomplishment in the overall scope of the patio makeover.

Elliott has a more simple, organic style when it comes to plants, so he chose a blue/green color scheme with only 6 different types of low maintenance plants. He also wanted to include a few small boulders to add some dimension and another design element to the space.

Plants

• Ice Plant Rosea
• Senecio Blue Chalk Sticks
• Agaves – Blue Nova, Ray of Light, & Attenuata
• Blue Fescue Grass
• Pink Flamingo Muhly Grass
• Giant Birds of Paradise

We planted the Giant Birds of Paradise in the back corner of the bed a few weeks prior, before we had fully devised a plan for the rest of the bed. So we decided the first thing we wanted to do was raise the Birds of Paradise up. We aimed to create a mounded, sloping effect with some additional bags of soil. This way, the bed has some gradation, depth, and more visual appeal.

The next step was to add in the rocks and stage our plants. We like to place all of our plants before actually planting them to make sure we like the design. Once we were happy with the layout, we planted everything starting from the back of the bed working our way towards the front.

You’ll notice that we spaced our two different ground cover plants, the Chalk Sticks and the Ice Plant, pretty sparse. We did this so that those plants will have room to grow, fill in, and naturally drape overtime. The Agaves are going to get larger and serve as really great statement plants. The Pink Flamingo Muhly grasses are going to add some really nice texture and movement to the bed. Our Birds of Paradise will get really lush with time, and take over that back corner nicely.

This bed receives direct sunlight throughout the middle of the day, so we made sure we chose plants that were tolerant of full sun. We are going to water this bed once a week, until all of the plants are established. Once everything is adjusted and rooted well, we will transition to once every two weeks.

This is a super easy project that we were about to tackle in just a couple hours time, with really great long term results. We will be sure to post an update as the plants grow and fill in!