Rededicating the Bird Bath Garden

Our bird bath garden will always be in my mind the bird bath garden, but it has also become something of a memorial garden to our recently deceased feline friend, Amber. I won't go into detail about Amber in this post as I did that back in December but she was a good friend who we were lucky to have known for as long as we did.  She had acute renal failure, which is failure of her kidneys. We knew that her days with us were numbered and already had something in mind for her burial.  The birdbath garden seemed to be a very fitting place for our fallen friend to rest. We buried her very close to the kitty cat statue in the picture below.  Maggie, our neighbor's cat, is sitting fairly close to Amber in the picture. They never really got along as Amber was always territorial and didn't behave well with other cats. 

Amber and Maggie never had the opportunity to meet face to face without a pane of glass in the way because we kept her inside all the time. We were always afraid of her wandering off and missing her treatments that kept her going strong. The garden doesn't look very impressive now but this past summer it was doing pretty well and will be once again when the weather warms.  I packed quite a few plants into this little garden.  Probably more than I should have.  I moved the purple leaf plum after the deer dined on it for the second or third time and the miscanthus will be moved to new locations this spring. 

There will be some changes and additions.  I'm planning on extending the garden to the left (in the above picture) another 6-8 feet which will change the overall layout into an "L".  I hope to include more ornamental grasses like switchgrass, a bench, and of course catmint.  It will be a tranquil spot to sit and watch the kids play while peacefully enjoying the garden.  The ornamental grasses will create a good privacy screen from our neighbors.  It will also be a nice place to share time with Amber in the garden.

Related Posts:

Bird Bath Garden in June
The Bird Bath Garden Progress (July)
The Evolution of the Bird Bath Garden

For more about pets in the garden visit Gardening Gone Wild's Garden Design Workshop.