Happy Monday Everyone! Hoping everyone had a nice Spring weekend!

The weather in our area has been SO amazing lately, so of course it’s definitely gotten me in the mood to do some much needed Spring planting inside and outside our home.  Nothing too major right now since we’ll be planning to paint our brick exterior in the next couple of months, so everything plant-wise is finding their new homes inside planters and containers.  We’ll give y’all an update on the landscaping plans we have for AFTER the brick paint job is complete! (Which hopefully will happen sooner than later! I’m ready for my ugly orange brick to be nice and white!…Just waiting on Phillip the “CFO” to give me the go-ahead!) 😉

Anywhoo! Like I said, I’ve been really trying out my green thumb lately and planting in different pots and containers for our home.  Some of my favorite things to plant have been for our containers at the front of our house.  We’ll most likely switch these out later on and update the pots to make them fit our house more (read: we’ll upgrade from the cheap $5 to a more substantial pot later! 😉 ) I’ve loaded the containers with inexpensive plants (all bought from our local Wally World!) and although when I first planted the containers, it didn’t have much of a “wow factor” after planting, now after a little bit of water, sunlight, and a whole lot of love, my front porch containers are finally looking cute!

I’ve followed the three layer formula for container gardening — THRILL-FILL-SPILL! I’ve used lemon grass to add some height and “thrill”, colorful snapdragons and lambs ear for the FILL, and created a SPILL off the sides of the container using Ivy.  

Also on our front porch, we’ve hung three Boston Ferns, again bought at our local Wal-Mart.  We don’t water these as much since there are birds nests in every single fern right now, but when we do, we use our handy-dandy watering can and make sure we’re VERY CAREFUL since Mama Bird is watching us closely from the tree branches nearby! 

On the backside of our house on our patio we have lots of ivy potted and getting established so eventually I’ll be able to re-home it to the front of our house! Either way, I just love for our patio to feel lush and green! Again, we bought these plants at Wal-Mart (we’re on a tight plant budget people!) Also in the back patio is one of my favorite creeping plants-a mandavilla! Thankfully, it survived during the winter and it’s now home to our cute pink flamingo and ceramic deer (left here from the previous owners. I love it! So it’s become our resident deer!) 

Inside our home we’ve got lots of plants growing! For starters, my favorite (& most EXPENSIVE plant!) is our Fiddle Fig Leaf! I bought this bad boy at Pike’s Nursery in Ballentyne and I’ve had quite a wild ride with this one! When I first brought it home, I thought it was in a great spot with lots of light. However, once leaves started turning brown and falling off, I knew I had to move it! So I moved it to our guest bedroom where it’s enough natural light ALL DAY LONG.  The bad leaves are in the process of falling off, but there’s SO much NEW growth taking place! I think I did it a HUGE favor by moving it.  We also have a lot of succulents around the house (they don’t require too much work..so that’s why we love them!) Also a couple cat palms, creeping ivy in small pots, and some Devil’s Ivy (which SOUNDS hard to grow, but really one of my favorite plants in the house!)  For all you fellow Panther fans out there…do you happen to notice that my little art man is going “the DAB”?! Hehe! 

Thanks for reading! Happy Monday! XO! -Emma Loo