Picture Perfect Cooking

We have finally gotten around to cleaning up the area where we built a new raised flower bed this spring so I wanted to show you how we did it.  Using the stacking wall blocks was a new experience for us, but it turned out to be pretty simple.  Our wall is just two blocks high so we didn’t have to worry about drainage pipe and gluing the blocks together.  It was a great project to cut our teeth on.

We purchased the wall blocks, leveling sand and rock at our local Lowe’s Home Improvement store and we were lucky enough to score free delivery, because these babies were heavy.  You would need a pretty heavy duty pick-up truck to haul these around.  Anyway, the Lowe’s delivery guy, who we have known for a long time and went to school with, put the pallets exactly where we wanted them with a small fork-lift.  So easy!

This is what we started off with:

Not real attractive, is it?  We had the sidewalk poured last year and left the big empty space on purpose, but the weather was so hot that we didn’t get it done then.  We proceeded to dig out the weeds and level the dirt as much as possible.  It looked so much better just doing that.

C dug a small trench along the sidewalk and started pouring in the gravel and we leveled that as we went.

Next, a thin layer of leveling sand was poured on top of the gravel and we leveled as we went again.

Now for the fun part…the blocks!

We put two rows of blocks, but we had bought enough for three layers.  Two was deep enough for what we wanted so we can use the others somewhere else.  C’s dad was nice enough to bring us a load of dirt with his front end loader and then I went to planting.  C & I had moved two Knock-out roses from my grandparent’s front yard that they didn’t want anymore so I planted those in there along with some perennial salvias and Shasta daisies. I love the dark blue, white and bright pink color combo. Since perennials are kind of expensive, I filled in the other areas with bright pink Vincas. Next spring, I want to add a couple of bright pink coneflowers.  The roses have finally came out of shock and are blooming their hearts out.  We are so pleased with how it turned out and how relatively simple it was.

We still have a little work to do on the other side of the sidewalk, but that will have to wait until cooler weather so we can seed a little grass.