The center focal point for my shade garden was built on Saturday – a big planter box (47″ x 21″ x 11″) – which my father and I built from scrap wood from various places around his house and yard.
I originally intended on using two pallets which have been languishing in a storage area at my office. We acquired them with our last delivery of Vegetarian Starter Kits (a PETA publication) a few months ago, and I have been trying to come up with a use for them ever since (they are not easy to get rid of, and I don’t like putting stuff on the curb for someone else to deal with). We quickly determined that the wood used to construct the pallets were just not going to be structurally adequate to fit the picture I had in my mind and switched to some serious lumber.
I want to keep it rustic; however, the bare (mismatched) wood was just a little bit too rustic for my aesthetic. It was such a beautiful day yesterday and I wanted the planter box to match the weather, so I used the left-over paint I had from when I re-painted one of the bathroom walls (as an accent) to give the planter some patio-pop!
After a quick sanding of the box, I tested a couple of application methods – ‘slapping paint on’ and a ‘wash technique’ – after letting both applications dry in the hot July sun, I opted for the ‘slapping of paint’ method. The dry wood sucked up so much paint as to make the wash barely visible – the photo above is the first coat (having dried overnight) – the second coat will be done today and then I can start the process of collecting soil, soil amendments, and plants.
Now that I know the size of the main planting area for the shade garden, I can move on to researching plant varieties. I am very fortunate to live in a beautifully landscaped area of town, which provides endless fodder for plant ideas – initial selection thoughts include members of the hosta, hydrangea, astilbe, and colocasia families, interspersed with a fragrant ground cover and a couple of strategically placed rocks to add a bit of contrast and depth. Additional thoughts are the need for a variety of randomly shaped/sized containers around the box to provide height and scale, as well as allowing me the option to have plants which would compete against each other in the same area!
I will leave you with a couple of pictures of my coleus kong mix as she continues her summer bloom – these may actually end of in the planter somewhere down the line – I LOVE the color!
PS: If anyone knows what type of plant this is, please let me know – it has all the bells and whistles that scream Strawberry; however, I have never seen a strawberry that has red/magenta flowers. I sadly did not take the little info stick when I picked these up and have no idea what it is.
UPDATE: The mystery strawberry has been identified – it is a variety called Fragaria x Lipstick – this Fragaria was developed in 1966 by crossing the garden strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa) with marsh cinquefoil (Potentilla palustris) which has red-purple flowers. What resulted is an excellent ground cover that produces less fruit, but large pinkish red blossoms throughout most of the summer until frost.
It is sending out a large runner, which I will let ‘find’ some nice soil to further propagate this beautiful garden ornamental – even though it does have a berry developing, from what I have read, this is not expected to be a heavy berry producer. Oh well!