Tub Garden Complete

While the shed foundation cures, I've been finishing up the bog garden. It's pretty much done, though there are a few little details I'm going to add relatively soon, and not all the plants are here yet. I'm trying to not completely plant it up now so I don't end up with no room for more plants in the future, or for the plants that are there to grow in.

The first amusing thing was that one of the neighborhood cats made a mistake and jumped into the hydrating peat moss and had Instant Regrets. I think I will not have much trouble with them in the bog garden.

I mixed up the new peat moss and sand and filled in the top of the tub. I need to trim off the extra landscape cloth but I was leaving it long to make moving soil around easier. I'll trim it off this week during one of my breaks from work.

The water level is staying where I want it; there's a tiny leak at the bottom of the pipe because it's not glued in place (so I can set a different water level if that works better), but that leak is less than the amount I plan to water this on a regular basis.

I had two plants to put in the garden right away; most of my other carnivorous plants were killed because of ash-fall from the fires last year (I have a plan for if that happens again this year; the plants won't be happy but I will put a cover over them so they don't get killed by the alkalinity of the ash).

This tub will be a mix of sarracenia and dionaea, which are temperate pitcher plants and flytraps. These plants naturally grow in bogs in North Carolina, so they grow really well outside here.

Here's Dionaea "King Henry" (I chose this because it's a classic flytrap variety and also named Henry like my beloved late cat):

And Sarracenia "Dixie Lace," which I had before and got a replacement for because I think it's a really interesting hybrid:

I got both of these through Plant Delights Nursery, which has an excellent selection of really unusual and interesting plants. I also got some other plants for other parts of the garden, to be discussed later.

And now that this is done, of course I have a client who may have another old, rusty clawfoot tub I can have for the price of moving it. I'm pondering whether I want to be that person with more than one tub garden.

posted by ayse on 06/20/21