My Front Patio Garden

My Patio Garden

My house is built into a hill, so my ground floor is actually my basement.  My main floor is the second floor, so the way it works out is my living room over looks my large garage at the side of the house.  When my dad built the garage, he turned the roof into a patio.

We used to have large flower pots on the patio, but over time, they caused the roof to bow.  We ended up placing them on the brick edge, which still looked nice, but it limited the number pots we could plant.

After I inherited the house, I had to replace the garage roof, because by that time, it was so old that it was leaking like a sieve.  All the wood had to be replaced.  I asked the contractor what we could do to make it stronger.  He suggested that we make the roof double thick.  He claims that now I could park a truck on it.  I don’t plan to test that, but I did dramatically increase the number pots, and I can place them all over the patio.

So here is my only garden that is completely safe from the dreaded deer.  I can plant anything I want in it, and I do.  Mostly, I have flowers, but this year I also tried lettuce and kale *success” and peas and fava beans.  Turns out the chipmunks found the peas this year and destroyed them all.  This was the first year I had fava beans, and actually the yield just wasn’t high enough to make them worthwhile.  Even though I planted them as early as possible, it got too hot for the plants too soon.

I always throw in some scarlet runner beans for the hummingbirds.  The beans are edible, but you should pick them when they are small if you want them to be tender.  

This garden attracts the hummingbirds, butterflies and birds.  It is fun just to look out the window and enjoy them.  This is where Thunder’s tower resides, too, so he can also watch the activity.