Prettying Up the Patio

It’s been awhile since I’ve talked about our patio. Here’s the recap: we redid our patio about 2 years ago (full story here), and since then have added furniture, new lights, and a bit of landscaping.

Remember back where we started? Yeah. Yuck.

In browsing pictures of patios, I found myself drawn to potted evergreens, specifically potted boxwoods. I was pinning pictures of them like crazy for awhile there onto my Exteriors and Outdoors board and finally got myself out to a local garden center a few weeks ago to get some dwarf english boxwoods. The pots are from Lowe’s.

The main motivation for getting these potted evergreens was those azaleas behind them. They are Encore Azaleas, and while they bloom nicely in the spring and again in the fall, they are not, in fact, evergreen like we thought. In reading up about it, it seems like this particular variety of Encore Azalea is evergreen in some climates, and perhaps even just depends on your soil and yard location, but for us they drop most of their leaves in the winter.

They look a bit stalky, even in the summer with all of their leaves. We thought about transplanting them to a less visible spot in the yard, but that’s a whole lot of work. Even though they are only a couple years old, when you dig up the plant and the root ball, it’s heavy and kind of a pain to work with. Plus there is a big risk of killing it since we are far from gardening experts here.

So instead we are strategically placing potted plants. The azaleas will get about 4 feet tall, so eventually will come up behind the potted boxwoods. That’s exactly what we want since the main stalkiness of the azaleas is down around the base.

The view looking out from our living room to the patio is much improved.

While I was at it I picked up some bright pink vincas. The patio gets full sun, so needed a sun loving annual. The vincas we did out front last year did really well, so I went with them again out back. They did so well last year, I had to trim them back a few times to keep them from looking too overgrown. They do trim back nicely, and while you end up cutting off some of the flowers, in about a week they were back in full bloom again.

These ones out back seem to be growing rapidly, so I expect some similar trimming will be in order in a couple months.

We also put a couple over by our hose and storage bin to add a little greenery up against the house. The hose is right behind the plants, so still easy to get to but not as obvious.

A fun surprise for us was the hydrangeas. They are blooming like crazy this year.

We bought them two years ago, so this is the third summer. I really don’t know exactly what we did to make them so happy. We planted them in a mixture of top soil and Leafgro. The second year we put Holly Tone all around the azaleas and hydrangeas. There’s a soaker hose running around the patio that we turn on most days, especially on the hot days, for 15-20  minutes. I didn’t trim them back last year, just left them as is in the fall.

You’ll find me out here a lot on nice days.

It’s definitely one of my favorite “rooms”!

Has anyone else been doing gardening this summer? It’s nice to step away from the indoor renovations and get your hands in some dirt, isn’t it?

Linking up to: Funky Junk Interiors, Savvy Southern Style, Remodelaholic, The DIY Show Off, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, Home Stories A2Z