Native prairie planting near the pond

Doesn't this look pitiful? Well, it's just the beginning; give it time. I wanted to show this photo as a placeholder of sorts. This will give me a benchmark for how this area looked when first planted. We'll all get to judge my garden design "vision." All the plants in this area are natives. Most were in the cartful of plants I purchased at Critsite's Prairie and Wetlands center. Many others were purchased at Heartland Nursery in Lee's Summit and a few at my favorite local garden center, Colonial Nursery. I'll highlight plants as they bloom rather than list all of them here now. I'm keeping my receipts which list the genus and species as well as the tags that came with each plant for future reference.

Hard to see in this photo is a bare spot toward the back of this planting. That will be filled with purple coneflower and Rudbeckia growing in gardens in the backyard. In the case of the coneflowers, I should say "overtaking" the island garden in the back. More about that project in another post.

For now, we'll just call this area the prairie garden. And this photo will help me remember how it looked in the beginning. The ground beneath this mulch is compacted from equipment and people traveling across this area while it was mud during our very wet spring. It will be interesting to see how well these plants fare given my hasty planting techniques and, for the most part, lack of soil amendments. At this point these plants have been in the ground for approximately 2 weeks. Almost all of them still look fairly healthy. I'm keeping my fingers crossed :-)