As long as I’ve known Mr. Lively, I have known that he dreams of having a garden.

His mom is a prolific gardener, and while living as a bachelor before moving to Chicago, Mr. Lively had his own vegetable garden as well.

And though we one day hope to have a home with yard or roof deck for our own vegetable garden, for now we are making the most of our current patio.

As you might recall from our home tour, the patio looked like this during the fall.

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Very cute, but lacking plants.

But after a little work this weekend, it now looks like this.

Same chair, rug, and vintage cooler, but now with a flower box full of color and a pup looking for his next treat.

On the left side of the flower box, we also have a new little friend.

Gus, the Garden Gnome, hails from the land of Target and now sports a gold-painted hat (of course).

In addition to the flower box in the center, we have a box filled with basil and cilantro, our favorite herbs, on the left side of the patio.

We also added a big pot filled with all the shade loving flowers we could find, as another “garden” element.

Because Franklin is fond of eating everything, we currently have it resting on a chair, out of the pup’s reach, until we can find the perfect perch.

While buying flowers for the pot, we overestimated how many plants we would need.

So the remaining plants made their way into a few empty vessels on the patio dining table.

Here’s a wide shot to give you the full effect.

Overall, we are really happy with how it all came together.

Though the space is rather small (5’x12′), it has everything we need for dinners and drinks outside during the warmer months to come.