Finished for Now

The front berm soil enrichment and planting is complete for now. I have a day lily that is ready to bloom and is currently too close to the weeping Japanese maple. When it finishes blooming, I will divide it up and plant it about a foot from where it is now. But that will be the last planting. So this is what it looks like from the corner of my driveway and the street, looking East.
I will add some more small rocks on the East end to create a little walkway to a stepping stone that is next to the top blueberry bush so I can pick it - in a year when it will be old enough to produce berries. But other than adding a few little ground covers and sedums when the temperature gets out of the high 90's in a few days, I AM DONE. I'm pleased with how it looks right now.

Scrap Your Day - JUNE

It's almost the 25th of the month and time to take photos to place in your year long album. If you don't know what I'm talking about check out this. My album is partially assembled, my photos from the past two months are taken and downloaded into my PSE5, but that's as far as I've gotten. Guess maybe tomorrow I need to spend some time and get something done besides take photos.

Progress Report

I haven't been around lately because I've been busy in the front yard almost every day, and planting a bit in my shade garden, and working at my part-time job, and volunteering my time for the Master Gardeners', and sleeping. That's it for the past week or more. So here's a progress report:

Remeber this from May 3rd? Bare ground view from my front steps.

By May 15th it looked like this:

Note the large shrubs out by the public sidewalk - they will be gone in the next photo. And now this is what it looks like as of noon today.

It's been a huge amount of digging, amending, planting and mulching. I should have the last little patch done in just a couple more days. I'm really happy with how it looks. By next year it should be filled in quite a bit. Here's another view that shows most of the planting.

so that's it, for now. The next post should show the finished front yard. And then I can get back to work on the back yard.......

Planting the Front Yard

After a marathon plant shopping spree with a friend on Saturday, I finally started putting some of my front yard plants in the ground. But first I planted up two containers for the front. The first one is for the porch where there is no direct sun. The cement urn is from a neighbor who no longer wanted it. The pinkish leaves are a fushia calico, sport of Gartenmeister; with a fern pellaea rotundifolia otherwise know as a button fern, and there are several pink impatiens that are too small to see yet.
The second pot is for a spot in full sun. The main plant is Heuchera Dolce Creme de Menthe, with some Perilla Magilla purple, and Dicondra Silver Falls, and my favorite, Millions of Bells. I've usually not put so much in my containers, but have learned from my Fine Gardening magazine that they look much better when planted really full. So I guess I'll see.

For about four hours on Sunday and another two today I double dug the first section of the front new garden space. It's located at the corner of the driveway and the sidewalk, and is the point of the berm. The soil in my yard is awful - sand and black mud which are totally lacking in all important nutrients and have a 5.4 pH according to the soil sample I had tested a couple months ago. So as I dug the trenches, I amended with lime, biofish fertilizer and an organic compost. What a pleasure it is to now dig in that area to plant.

My plan is to have this garden be as drought tolerant in the summer and moisture tolerant in the winter as possible. So plants were selected with that in mind. In the photo you will see a small, reddish Japanese maple tree that will get about 5 - 6 feet tall and will be primarily upright with a bit of a drape, 3 carex that will have lovely brown tipped seed stalks, coreopsis - tickseed, a Phormium 'Maori Sunrise' that will get about 3 feet tall, and a day lily 'Stella d'Ora'. There are also a red creeping thyme and a draping ice plant by the wall. The mass of bright green to the bottom right is my purple scented violet that spreads all over my yard. It's easy to pull after it's bloomed so I just love it and encourage it to naturalize freely. In the right rear you can also see an established bed that has a red barberry, iris, calla lilies, pulmonaria, Asiatic lillies, a huge daphne, yarrow, and penstemon in it. I've been adding to that one for many years and it's really well filled in now.

Hope you enjoyed this garden tour as much as I enjoyed creating it.