Gardening update

We've been planning on doing some gardening work ever since we moved in and while we have done some stuff like sweeping, pulling sticks and rocks and trash etc out of the beds, we just haven't gotten around to planting anything in there.. until today that is! We started with nearly empty beds. One bed has a lovely rosebush in it which has already had one flower this year and has several more buds, and the other bed had a reasonably good sized tree, at least good sized for our little garden. It has some gorgeous purple flowers starting in the spring and going well into the fall. It was flowering the first time that we saw this place back last April and it was one of the big reasons that I fell in love with the house. Anyway, this lovely tree makes our back yard pretty shady so we just haven't been sure what to do with it. Today we went to Home Depot and picked out some various plants and flowers which were labeled as doing well in partial sun/shade. The result:

Here is the smaller of the two beds before planting, including my beloved rosebush:




Then we added these:



And got this:





We had leftover plants so we decided to do the other side even though we had planned to wait until later. Sorry, no before picture here. Bed on the side with the tree:




My particular favorites:

Cala lily!


And this bush that we got, I don't remember the name (I will have to look up the tag) but it has these long trailing springs of white flowers. It is supposed to get pretty big but I am hoping we can just keep it trimmed and it will be ok:



I also really like the small leafy plants that we stuck in here and there. The leaves are green and red and really cute.