Lawns to Legumes Garden Gallery

Region

Southwest MN

City

Marshall

Project Type(s)

Pocket Planting

Template(s) Used

Sunny and Low Garden for Pollinators (BWSR)

Site Conditions

Full Sun

Gardener Name

Anita C

Gardener Comments

One is a rock garden, the other is the edge of our garden. I did the fall planting and was worried about everything establishing, especially the plants vs. seeds. They did come back this spring and look great! I would have spaced things out a little bit more if I would have known how much it would spread out. This fall I might move a few things around in the rock garden, otherwise the larger plants will choke out some of my smaller plantings.
The strip pollinator by the garden will have some challenges. I don’t want it to spread into my garden and take over, so I will have to watch that going into the next year. For this first bloom since I planted last fall, there are a few spots that are sparse, but I feel they will fill in more in the next couple of years. Hoeing and hand weeding has given me LOTS of time to think and just take in nature!
I really have had to stay on top of the weeding. Especially where I planted the seeds. It has been a chore, but so nice to see it filling in with some of the other “summer” pollinators. My rock garden turned out WAY better than I could have hoped for!!
I am so glad I went through this project. I had been thinking about it for quite a while and just couldn’t seem to figure out what I wanted to do. We had moved our garden over to get more sunlight and I had the idea to plant the pollinators there instead of just putting it into grass. I have a lot of different areas with pollinators, but these were both through Blue Thumb/Lawns to Legulmes. The design ideas really helped me choose what kind of plants I wanted in my rock garden. I had to do some research to make sure I planted for every season and that I had the larger plants in the back and the smaller in the front. Overall, I would definitely do this again and might still do more in the future.

Wildlife Observed

Lots of bees and butterflies! I am not sure about any deer or other wildlife, other than maybe some birds! My dog loves to sniff the flowers! 🙂