I got a little too excited about my landscaping projects, and I ordered over 60 plants a few weeks ago. Mercifully, they didn’t all ship at the same time. I did get about 40 of them a couple of weeks ago, though, so I had several days of furious soil cultivating, hole digging, planting, and praying to the garden gods. I learned a couple of things: One, in the future I need to not order a bunch of plants all at once. Two, I truly am not cut out for manual labor (but thank god I started lift class back in January).
Many of the plants arrived in “bare root” form. Basically dead-looking sticks or chips of wood with alien tentacles of roots attached to them. I have no experience with planting anything but starter plants that actually look like plants, so I’m keeping my expectations low for those bare root jobbies. I don’t think I’d go the bare root route again, unless this was the only form available for a plant I really wanted. There’s just something really unsatisfying about planting what looks like a dead, hairy wood chip.
The already-established plants were there when we moved in. We removed several that we really didn’t like, and transplanted a few more. Then I planted Russian Sage, Echinacea, Butterfly Weed, and Lavender around the borders. I bought a couple of potted plants at a local plant sale – Lavender and Echinacea – so maybe if the bare roots don’t make it at least these will.
Front Yard Border
Echinacea. Do you see it? Yeah, me neither.
Echinacea that IS visible to the naked eye!
Lavender from the plant sale.
That’s Zebra Grass in the corner and a tiny Lavender in the foreground:
Lavender and Zebra Grass
This east-facing spot is the new home of a Pink Delight Butterfly Bush:
Butterfly Bush. Someday it could be as large as 10' by 10'.
Grow, Butterfly Bush, grow!
I hope this Volcano Clematis will someday provide a bit of a screen between us and the neighbor next door:
Clematis. Someday it'll have lovely deep purple-red flowers. I hope.
I’m still waiting on some cornflowers that also will go in the borders, and a yellow primrose lilac for an east-facing spot in front of the house.
The complete Drought Tolerant Garden, which will go here where we pulled out rosebushes, hasn’t arrived yet either:
Buh-bye, rose bushes.
The main theme in the front is “drought-tolerant, iffy-soil-tolerant plants.” The Clematis, Lilac, and Butterfly Bush are the indulgent exceptions.
In the back of the house, I spent an absolutely back-breaking half day digging out a 4×5 area of what I thought was soil but turned out to be more like the graveyard for someone’s rock collection with a bit of dirt mixed in. I recently learned that former owners of our home had covered much of the plantable property with a “rock garden,” and I fear much of it remains under a thin layer of topsoil, weed paper, and wood chips. SUPER! So I dug about 3 feet down in the 4×5 rectangle, and then began building it back up with bagged topsoil, a little dirt from the excavation pile, and some compost. Here’s an in-progress shot, after which a whole lot more digging was done:
Nothing like some manual labor to make you feel ALIVE.
After the batch of plants arrived, I planted 6 Lily-of-the-Valley pips (or whatever those pointy non-plant-looking things are called), a Bleeding Heart, and an All Summer Beauty Hydrangea. The hydrangea looked pretty bad when it arrived – very wilted – and I don’t think it’s going to make it. I expect I’ll be ordering a replacement. I’m not optimistic about the Bleeding Heart, either. With less than 2 weeks in the ground, the Lilys-of-the-Valley are already starting to shoot up a bit. So there’s one piece of good news.
Lilys-of-the-Valley, Bleeding Heart, (dying) Hydrangea
Lily-of-the-Valley 2 weeks in the ground. It lives!
I added the fencing around the rectangle to keep Oscar out. He recently discovered his deep passion for dirt, and he just about lost it when I was trying to plant this area and wouldn’t let him get right in there and help me dig. I had to put him in his kennel, or suffer the ear-splitting shrill bark of a maltipoo denied the right to furiously dig up my plantings. He loves dirt so much, when I filled a planting hole with water and turned away for a minute, I looked back to find him drinking the mud from the hole. A couple of times I’ve caught him burying his entire face in a fluffly pile of potting soil. I’m all for enthusiasm in the garden, but it’d really be a lot more helpful if he’d learn to pull weeds.
I ordered some Hostas for the back that have yet to arrive, and I have some Astilbes and Purple Wintercreepers that are in the produce drawer of the fridge. I physically couldn’t bring myself to do any more planting right after they arrived, but I plan to pull them out this weekend and get them planted.
My Life 2.0 