Out with the Creeping Phlox, In with the Lamb's Ear

I went out Friday night and bought six more Lamb's Ear. You may remember that I bought five earlier this spring. Three of those are planted here:

If you keep walking toward the arbor, you will come to the area I am replanting today.
It's the front of this long border. I stuck the new Lamb's Ear in the creeping phlox last night just to hold the pots upright. The phlox has grown so thick and tangled that I cannot get the grass out, so it's time to redo this area,. The silver should look nice in front of this lavender which is just about to bloom in all it's purpley goodness.


As soon as the rain stopped (about 8:00 am) I went out and began to dig up the creeping phlox. It took less than half an hour to get the first wheelbarrow load.
I am liking it already. That lavender takes center stage once that mat of phlox is gone.

I continued to work on this area for about two hours. I decided to leave some of the creeping phlox because I do love its early spring bloom. I also decided to plant the Lamb's Ear in a drift of three on each side of the lavender. I love repeat patterns in a garden and that is how I planted the first three in the photo at the top of this post.

Since I've added so much of the chartreusy green hostas in other areas of this garden, I decided to plop that same color dead center. I walked around the rockwall garden to see what I could dig up to put on each side of the hosta. I decided that two Bergenia might work. Bergenia has pink blooms at the same time the purple phlox will bloom in the spring. I also added a large Sedum Autumn Joy on each side because I wanted to repeat the big round shape that I have in a number of areas along this garden.

This is what I ended up with:

My first impression is that I love this! It's so much more interesting than having 12+ feet of creeping phlox!

I liked it so much that I dug out a few feet of phlox on the opposite side and replaced it with another huge chartreusey green hosta that used to be on the walking path on the opposite side. It was gettng so big it was obstructing the path, so I replaced it with a smaller hosta.
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I still need to put a nice edge on the new area. It started raining again about 11:30 A.M. so I had to stop for now.

I think the lavender really does stand out now.


What do you think of the change?