Front yard

The Front yard is one of the nicest parts of the yard this time of the year. I re-did the entire bed in the front yard this spring and filled it with only perennials. It's a lot less work in the future, but still a nice subtropical look. Here are some pics!
Knockout Roses...







Overview...


And here's the front porch container plants this year. I decided that Mandevillas would add a lot of color and height and planted some Verbanas underneath with some purple hearts in the back. In the very front are my Eastern Prickly Pears. They get burning hot sun ALL day long and have not bloomed in 3 years. I'm hoping that this will be the year that breaks that tradition. I really want to see some blooms and one of the plants made over 30 pads this spring!

The Hardy Hibiscus is BACK!

My favorite perennial in my yard... maybe even of all time is Hibiscus "Kopper King". It's extremely cold tolerant and looks tropical. It's definitely the traffic stopper in my yard and I don't even give it extra care.
This past March I moved it a few feet away from my crape myrtle (it was previously right next to it) to give both plants some more space. Neither of the plants are showing any ill effects and they should both be blooming like crazy in a few weeks. Here's my Swamp Hibiscus as of today. It's a little bit behind, but it should catch up fast.

Weekly UPDATE! (June 2, 2013)

It's June and the yard is finally coming together, so all summer long (I'll try to be consistent) I will take pictures of the same part of the yard to show the growth rate. It will specifically be under the label "Weekly Update!"

Walkway including my coconut palm, adondila, elephant ear, and large plumeria

 Pool Area including my Trachys, Livistona, some Elephant ears, my damaged foxtail palm, my Saba, my philodendron, and sprouting butterfly ginger.

Front Yard plants including my Med Fan palm, Sabal Minor, Ensete, Brugmansia, Elephant ear, and some sprouting Butterfly, Spiral, and Alphina gingers.

Bottle Palm

One of my other new purchases this year was a Bottle palm. Here's a pic of it from May 30th!

Bismarkia was rotten!

Pulled the spear on my Bizzy and it had rot so I'm returning it today and hoping for the best. I'll post pics if I get a new one.

Got 2 new palms!

Got 2 new palms this week and I really like them.
Here's My Bismarkia Palm (got it for $90, which I thought was pretty reasonable)

 Here's the Pygmy palm (Cost only $50 at Home Depot!)

SUMMER IS ALMOST HERE!

Sorry I have neglected this blog. The yard looks terrible right now, really awful. Fortunately I have a lot more time now so I will be focusing on planting, fertilizing, and cleaning everything up. If the weather cooperates, things will be looking nice in a few weeks. I will start posting pics again in a week or 2 and keep this updated almost daily for the Summer 2013 growing season.

Here's my 10 day forecast. Cool the next few days (good for planting!), then warming up to the 70s which will hopefully get things growing!