Urban Gardening

As you may know by now I love living downtown. Having lived Out East for a few years, I decided to move to the very core of downtown and have been happy every single minute. However, one thing I miss is being able to walk out to my garden and putter around in the dirt. Truth be told I actually did more than puttering in my yard, I single-handedly overhauled the landscaping. Believe me when I tell you that the previous owners of the house I used to live in were just not that into yard work much less trying to design attractive curb appeal.

When I see fellow bloggers' stories about planting a few annuals here and there I get just the slightest urge to plant something. There are some large street planters in front of my building that have some rather boring evergreens growing in them; there are two to a planter. If they were surrounded by some color or trailing vines they would be much more appealing. One pair of them died about two years ago and the planter has been empty ever since. One of my fellow residents got tired of it being used as a trash can and weed incubator so she planted some sweet potato vine, a few herbs and some coleus. So far so good, they are all doing well even though it looks like the odd man out in a line of other planters with evergreens. But it's an interesting experiment at least and she got a gardening fix. I never really attempted a rooftop garden though I have talked about it before. There are a multitude of reasons why I think that would be a disaster on my rooftop the main reasons being the wind (14 stories up) and full sun.

Memphis City Gardens at Central Station gives those of us who live in a hardscape world a chance to dig in the dirt. Here's a little information from their website:
"Memphis City Gardens at Central Station will launch in May 2011. In cooperation with the South Main Association, MATA, and the Memphis Farmers’ Market, four prototype bed gardens have been built near the south parking area of Central Station in downtown Memphis.

A committee was formed in early 2011 with a mission to promote urban garden education, to contribute to the beatification of Memphis, and to grow healthy food in the Memphis community. The urban garden is non-profit, and in its first stages of implementation.
Additional information will be forthcoming as the prototype garden mission continues. Information will be available on the Memphis City Gardens website at www.MemphisCityGardens.org, on Twitter at @MemCityGardens, and at Facebook.com/MemphisCityGardens."

Apart from a few house plants, here are some of my inside "gardening" ideas...

A faux peony next to a garden ornament on my desk.

Livestock: A free ranging house dog.

A concrete garden ornament at my door - my "curb appeal".

Garden lights and my rock garden.