A hot mess

One of the solutions for a wet place in a landscape is to create a rain garden.  The idea is that you should embrace the low place, dig it out a little deeper and introduce plants that thrive in a feast or famine environment. 

It seemed like a good idea for the low place in my side yard so I started planting the area with natives that I literally dug from road sides and pass-a-longs from other gardeners. 

At first it was a huge mess because I had to keep it weeded since I couldn't really mulch the area that I wanted to spread and/or reseed. 

Then it became even messier because the plants wouldn't reseed according to my vision of swaths of bright colors.  They continued to insist on reseeding and spreading in random directions all through the bed.

After nearly 10 years the plants have happily spread randomly all through the rain garden according to their own plan.  I've decided to embrace the idea of a brightly colored hot mess.   The color pallet changes almost daily.  Sadly, the photos do not do it justice.