Fails and desires.

Last year my parents planted the most massive bundle of sun patients.  They looked amazing.  People would stop by their west lawn just to look at them.  I thought they looked lovely.  So this year I wanted to attempt to do the same.  

They planted them around 2 large trees.  The trees are approximately 15 feet from one another, so the 2 big masses of flowers looked amazing.  This is just one of the sections pictured below. 

One of the things I knew going into the project was that it was going to take A LOT of water to get them to look even remotely like this.  Dad had a soaker hose system installed in these two beds so that they would get a reasonable amount of water.  Along with all this beauty though, comes a really big water bill.  This is not desirable.  Why don't they put that on the plant tag...."This plant is REALLY expensive because you have to water it every 20 minutes"....that would have made me re think this option and move on to something else.

While our whole lawn is in transition right now, the grass looks more brown (because of the treatments to kill weeds) than green and my flowers are consistently looking wilted because I'm not out there to water them every 20 minutes. Geez.  I really went wrong this year on the gardening.  Bummer.  Though, it is only June, perhaps things will get better.  I don't see how it could possibly get hotter than it is right now...it's already readying 100 daily in Memphis with the heat index at like 242 degrees.  Yuck.


Moving forward ... I took these photos last summer in front of Anthropologie in Kansas City.  I love these planters and I love the plants they put in them.   Isn't it an interesting way to prune this shrub?  I think it's divine....now if I could only get my hands on those planter/urn numbers!!!! this may have to be a big DIY (except I'm not very good at that sort of thing).