Does your flower garden ever embarrass you?

Does your flower garden ever embarrass you? As a wedding venue owner it’s very important for the flowers in my yard to look outstanding! Wedding guests love to walk around the yard and even go into my vegetable garden. This last year my Morning Glory plants ended up looking like crap. I know, not a nice word, but that really does sum it up. This beautiful vining flower covers my weakening old log cabin, and makes a stunning photo area for the photographers that come to the Ridge. So what happened? Why was this year different than the last few years? Then I had an awe-haw moment.

The Morning Glory is an annual flower and that means that it needs to be replanted every year. However, it will re-seed itself sometimes and you get little starts from last year’s plant. It was suggested that I just let the starts grow and not re-seed. At the time, I thought that was a great idea because I could stop buying new seed every year. Saving money is always a good idea, right? In this case, wrong!

Let me share a few reasons why just letting the Morning Glory re-seed itself was the wrong thing to do.

• The Flowers on the vine were small and flower blossoms few and far between. They looked sickly and not at all magnificent like usual.
• The vine itself usually goes crazy wild (love this) and climbs to the top of the old log cabin walls and spills over the other side. Nope, that didn’t happen, I was so disappointed.
• The new vines from the plants that had re-seeded didn’t cover the old dead vines. Why would I leave the old dead vines up anyway you might ask? It’s always so the new vines have something to grab onto as they make their climb.
• The overall look of this beautiful old log cabin was second-rate compared to its usual stunning appearance, this made me very sad.. This log cabin is a photo area for photographers that grace our Ridge wedding venue in the summer so it needs to look it’s best.

Each Spring-

Each spring season I anxiously wait for our Fred Meyer store to put out the flower seeds. I buy them way before I can plant them. I just can’t help myself!  After looking at snow and old brown dead grass all winter I “need” something that says SPRING is on its way.

I’ve always had a little basket full of left-over seeds and I add to it yearly. This year I didn’t look in the basket before I bought seeds. When I got home from buying my Morning Glory seed, guess what? I had bought exactly the same colors from a few years ago, I guess my favorite colors are Heavenly Blue and Grandpa Ott!

Being embarrassed over my Morning Glory faux-pas, I’ll admit, was probably more about me than our venue guests. I know how it should look, and while others think it’s pretty anyway, I was dissatisfied. Just remember the Morning Glory seed should be planted “new” every year. I’m looking forward to this spring when I can take out the old, and reseed with the new. I want that Crazy Beautiful vine to take over that old log cabin once again. Does your flower garden ever embarrass you?