Garden Pic Wednesday: My Various Flower Beds

For me, here in northwest Florida, mid-February to the end of March is my window for edging and mulching all my beds while my grass hasn't fully awakened from it's winter sleep. 

I say this because I have southern creeping grass, like Centipede & St. Augustine, that is relatively easy to move while it's brown, but horrible to adjust once it's fully greened in and a thick mat.

Edging it now makes edging stray grass runners is easier later.

Usually, I use mowings for mulch, but it helps to put down a base of pine bark mulch every couple years, then layer the mowings on top of that. This year, I'm laying down the pine bark mulch again. 

Finished End of New Block Retaining Wall:

I added these red scallop edged blocks on the outer edge to separate the dirt around the tree from the blocks forming the pad for the trash bin.
  This, of course, involved moving those blocks over two inches!
Then I added Liriope (pronounced la-rye-a-pee). It blooms purple flowers and is great for shady & rooty area nothing else will grow in. It is invasive, however. So be warned. It's no respecter of bounds. It sends runners underground and I have tons of it.
 I'm always digging up strays and moving them places like this, though here it can spread freely. 
It can be mowed. I read a gardening suggestion saying one could let it occupy lawn areas where grass won't grow and just mow it.
This area is picture happens to be thick pine tree roots, so grass has a hard time and I've made up my mind that if the Liriope I've put various places along this wall gets out of bounds, that's exactly what I'm going to do--mow it.

Next: My North Side Hosta Bed:
It looks bare now, but Hostas fill this area until frost and Spider-house-plants-gone-wild fills the area under the Privet in front!

And lastly, we have my front Gardenia/Daylily bed:

Native orange daylilies ring the sunny front and far end of this bed, running around the cable box and the telephone pole, so I don't have to worry about weed-eating.

You can see a bushy Black-eyed Susan that wintered
 over in the background.
The stringy leaves in front are Dutch iris and you can see my stacked clay pots that used to hold assorted succulents that didn't live through the freeze--all except the blue-green hen in the small clay pot.

  I usually have Wandering Jew in that plastic pot behind the stacked clay pots, which drapes thickly over the side all summer and looks gorgeous! (Presently it's in a vase in the house waiting for seasonal enough weather to go back outside!)

With this bed, I actually only applied the pine bark mulch along the outer edge. (After creating a slight groove in the dirt with a hoe to fill with mulch.) The middle is filled with all the leaves and pine needles that had been there previously that I just raked out, chopped up with the mower and re-applied. That will suffice because this bed is less weed prone then any other.

Well, that's show and tell for today!

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Stop back tomorrow for Mama Kat!