Design on a Dime- Grandparents Edition "Finale"

Today my daughter and I went to my grandparents to work on their backyard. My grandma is having difficulty getting around these days, so I wanted to spruce up her backyard to make her WANT to come outside. I posted the BEFORE pics last week, you can view them here. They lost a lot of plants to the frost that hit us back in December, so I wanted to replace some of those and add some additional color too. The hummingbirds love it here. She's commented often about how many times they visit her feeder- but it wasn't until I spent 11 hours outside that I got to learn how much. I am jealous! I spent most of the day getting dive-bombed by hummers who were a little ticked that I was in their territory. Hopefully they'll get over it when they see that a lot of my plant choices were for them. Most of the new additions are pretty small, but they'll fill into the space nicely. My grandparents love to visit the beach (notice the abalone shells), so I tried to add some tropical plants- or at least as tropical as we can get here in Sacramento. My mom and I both dug up some of our canna's to bring over, so they now have four different kinds that will colorfully greet them each summer. I also wanted to add some plants that could break up all of this fence. I bought them a Robertson's naval orange tree because they love to eat oranges (and citrus is kinda my thing...ya know?). I chose Robertson because it is a heavy producer, but is also one of the more compact oranges- so I can keep this tree below 6 feet without any problems. I also chose it because the fruit tends to grow on the outside of the tree- so they wont have to be digging into the tree to find their fruit. Some of the other "taller" additions are two Rose of Sharon 'Sugar Tip' Hibiscus and a 'Syringa Boomerang' Lilac- all which I got from Farmer Fred. Actually, over half of the plants I used for my grandparent's garden I got from Fred, so I really lucked out! Thank you again Fred!

I also added some hardy verbena to form into a nice purple carpet, some salvia grahamii to keep the hummingbirds happy, and autumn joy sedum to feed the bees and the birds.
I managed to save a heavily damaged kangaroo paw plant that had gotten hit by the frost. My grandpa was going to take a shovel to it and toss it out a few days ago but my mom told him to wait and just let me do it. Today when he walked outside he said "I see you dug up that one plant that died that your grandma liked". Nope, just cleaned it up a ton- it's in the picture above in the lower right corner.

I put a lot of annuals in the yard to add temporary color until the other plants have a chance to fill in. There are petunias, zinnias, coleus- even a couple tomato plants will provide some nice color. The hardest part of this little day project was the soil. It was horrible! It was full of rocks and chunks of cement. I spent a large part of the day digging their soil out, and replacing it with a much higher quality of soil and some compost. I had planned on using most of the bagged soil I brought to dress up some pots, but I ended up using it all in the beds- the pots can get done another day! I ran drip lines to all of the new plants, then used 5 bags of bark to cover up all of my lines. The final result is 100 times better than how it started. Sure- if I had tons of money I could have done a lot more, but this is perfect for them as it is. I think they were just happy that I came and helped out for the day.