More Before and After-- front flower bed

Before...

Here's one of our flower beds, in its Before state, actually prior to our front porch railing replacement. The bed (and the porch) was a complete disaster, ground cover plants and dandelions had taken over. I decided to wait until June to do something about it, so that all of the plants would have a chance to come up. I wasn't disappointed, I found a few 'volunteers' or
remnants of plants that had been placed there by past owners.

After...

All of the rocks for the border came from the yard, I have been collecting more to complete and will be filling in with lake rocks that I'll collect on vacation in Minnesota next week.

I put down mulch today, and time will take care of washing away the dirt. It was quite a bit of work to remove the ground cover plants, they were well-entrenched! I thought about trying to salvage some of them to give to a friend in need of such things, but it would have been too much work to keep them alive until he was able to collect them.

I chose the perennials and their arrangement/placement based on their height at maturity. I am hoping that the effect is a sublime waving effect when one drives by the house.

Incidentally, cedar mulch is about the best smelling thing on earth!