What a garden season it has been. Between work, launching the market stand, my pastry night classes, and Patrick’s master’s ceremony and graduation party, we’ve been busy (in the best way). On top of all that, we managed to keep most of our seeds alive and finish the garden expansion project. AND, if you read my Horrifying Horticulture blog, we even knocked out the construction of the Poison Garden. WOW. I also installed three new bee colonies. Needless to say, I owe you updates.

The Garden: She’s bigger and better than ever.

My weekends were consumed by my Saturday all-day-long pastry classes, followed by all-day baking on Sunday for the market, so the initial construction fell to Patrick. With the help of Robby Bobby, they knocked it out in two days.

Glen Ellyn offers free mulch pickup outside the Public Works facility (yes, it’s free! Click here for info from the Village), so we covered the weed barrier with it, and added a few inexpensive aluminum beds. This will likely not be our permanent layout, but it works for now since we needed to get our plants into some dirt and were already maxing out our budget for this project.

Patrick also built my section for the poison garden. This section needed to be fenced in for the protection of both the plants and any people or animals that might encounter them. What these plants are capable of is no joke, and they need to be handled responsibly. That being said, this was a fun project to see come to life. I covered one section of the Poison Garden with slats to filter the light since the Foxglove and Baneberry need partial shade. I also had some old windows in my garage that I decided to add to the sides for some visual interest. I’ll eventually be painting over the original white. I love the Poison Garden, it adds a spooky, magical feeling. I’m excited to add my belladonna and monkshood whenever they decide to germinate.

So far this had been an enchanting garden season, I’m excited to keep reporting on the growth!