Friday, April 22, 2011

Monday, April 11, 2011

A New Flower Bed

When you buy a house, you buy a landscape.  Some good and some bad.  When I bought this house I liked the shade from the mulberry tree, I liked the roses in the backyard, I liked the brick-bordered flower beds in the back yard.  But I hated the palm tree in the back corner, the sickly juniper in too much shade, and the formless jasmine under the front window.  We inherit wealth and we inherit genetic traits like alapesia.  Over the last several years I've been focusing on improving the "genetics" of my yard.

Some things, like the palm tree, were just begging to be torn out.  The jasmine in the front though has held its place largely because I didn't know what to do without it.  But then last weekend the wifey mentioned how she hates the jasmine.

It was a light bulb moment for me.  Within minutes I was outside cutting down and digging up the jasmine.  The next day I was at the nursery picking out plants.  And a few days later I was at the quarry picking out a thousand pounds of New England Tudor Stone.  Aside from some mulch, I'm just about finished.  

In this bed:
Hydrangea 'Nigra'

Azalea 'Gumpo White'

Azalea 'Fielder's White'

A potted Acer palmatum 'Kamagata'

Myosotis palustris 'Water Forget-Me-Not'

Lady Fern

And here's a picture of it all put together before the mulch goes in to cover the drip irrigation line.  It's also littered with droppings from the mulberry tree that will give this whole bed a lot more shade as the leaves fill in.