Update: Wildflower Bed

 In the next two weeks, by July 13th, I want to give this wildflower bed a facelift. Hopefully by posting this goal on here, I will be able to hold myself accountable. I'm still undecided as to what I want to do: 1) try to plan things so that different wildflowers will bloom in the later summer weeks each year, 2) just fill the bed with some annuals to tide things over or 3) decide to plant some other type of bulb which will bloom for next year.

You can see that some of the California poppies are still hanging on (we have been enjoying them for two months!), but a lot of the poppies in the back are starting to fade. There are also a whole bunch of weeds and tall grasses that are filling the bed. I'm anxious to clean everything up now, but I also want to wait for the poppy seed pods to burst and scatter seeds for next year. Wildflowers are a little bit tricky to maintain, at least when you are trying to maintain a garden that is constantly in bloom!

Even though I can't take out the poppies yet, today I decided to throw in five Polaris Red Penstemon plants to add at least a little bit of color. These are perennials, so I'm planning on having at least a little bit of red in this garden bed next June. Hopefully this will be a nice added color, provided that the pink flowers will scatter seeds a bit more next year. Right now there are only a handful that are concentrated in the back corner of the bed:

Hopefully I can figure something out with this garden. I don't want to plant something that constantly needs to be watered, since the garden is so close to the foundation of the house.