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The Longest Landscaping Post Ever

Sunday, July 17, 2016 19:47

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Our landscaping is done for now! I’m so excited to share, because this damn post has literally taken me a solid week to write. Maybe one day I will have free time again! Also, a fun drinking game is to take a drink every time you read the words ‘Japanese,’ ‘Juniper,’ or ‘Coneflower.’ I guess I know what I like! The last time you saw the house, we had just gotten all the evergreens ripped out, and it looked like this:

We have done a lot of work since then, and now it looks like this!

We have worked and worked to get it to this point, and I love it! First of all, the door. You guys, it is BRIGHT and bold, but I am happy I went in this direction. The door is still ugly, but we don’t want to replace it just yet, so the paint helps to modernize it and make the gold inlaid glass disappear a little more. We still need to get a white full view storm door, which will make the white vertical pieces make more sense.

The color is SW Refresh, which is a favorite ‘mid-century modern’ turquoise on the awesome site Retro Renovation. What a fun punch of color to complement our orangey brick! I also found some vintage style ceramic pots to complement the door.

Shortly after the front was mostly cleared out, Shaun started digging out a larger front planting bed.

We like a clean look, so for now there is just a trench around the plantings rather than actual edging. We may add something in the future, but for now this works and he can mow right up to the mulch.

And here are some closer photos of the plants we chose. From left to right: Red switch grass, three Speedwell, Blue Star Juniper, ‘All Gold’ Japanese Forest Grass.

Left bottom is three Anna’s Magic Ball Arborvitae, right bottom is three Red Sweet William. Lone green ball in the middle is a ‘Linesville’ Arborvitae.

We bought the pot at a local garden center and filled it with a Tropicana, spikes, asparagus fern, and sweet potato vine. Around the pot is two Japanese ‘Sky Pencil’ Holly (against house) and three Japanese Blood Grass. More Magic Ball Arborvitaes under the other window. ’Daybreak’ tickseed in front of those.

Purple coneflowers, Pampas grass, Japanese forest grasses, Tamukayama Japanese maple, white Phlox hiding behind the Pampas grass. Not pictured just to the left: Nest Spruce and Orange Rocket Barberry.

We waited for the lilacs along the walkway to finish blooming so we could dig those out and transplant in early June. This was a very hard thing for me to do, because they smelled AMAZING! But we knew the hedge was just too large to stay there. It was pouring rain when we did it, because we just happened to have a lot of family over for Shaun’s birthday to watch the kids. Yep, he did this on his birthday:

We aren’t sure if they will live, but if they don’t, at least we tried. It would be nice to have such large shrubs to hide the neighbor’s chain link! Spoiler alert: things aren’t looking great. We do lay the hose on them every day…and the one on the left is crappy looking because it was in between the other two in the front and lost it’s foliage on both sides. Oh well. We also planted sky rocket junipers to the left to help hide the fence.

The area where the lilacs were is my favorite because we decided to incorporate some pots we had with large tropicals. The colorful one is Croton, the middle is a Cordyline, and the one by the stoop is a Dracaena.

But my favorite part is the ‘Old Gold Pom Pom Juniper’ tree in the front. I got this from Home Depot for $75 and it is so stinkin cute! Underneath that is three Blue Fescue grasses. We left all the existing creeping Phlox that is tumbling over the retaining blocks and then also planted some hens and chicks and ground cover sedum. This area is definitely going to change as we live here, I love having room to expand the landscape!

The area on the other side of the driveway looked like this before:

And, here it is now!

We’ve got a lot of goodies in here. Dwarf Japanese Juniper at the end, the big leaf hosta we have moved from Russet street, to Minnesota, to here, a planter I’m not sure where to put, then a Globe Blue Spruce in tree form because we loved the one we had in Minnesota so much! Under that is a Bonanza Gold Japanese Barberry, two Dwarf Black Eyed Susans, and another Speedwell.

Here you can see a ‘Julia’ coneflower, behind that is an ‘All Purple’ something or other, Daub’s Frosted Juniper is right in front of my frog, the three blue perennials to the left are dwarf ‘Summer Nights’ Delphinium, and the orange one behind those is Butterfly Weed. Behind that one is a ‘Little Rocket’ Ligularia. Here you can see I planted a few ‘Scarlet Flame’ Moss Phlox near the edge of the retaining blocks to spill over like the side by the door.

The side of the house has a selection of panicle hydrangeas, ‘Little Lime’ on the ends, ‘Little Quick Fire’ next to those, and ‘Fire Light’ in the middle. I also have to paint that rusty gas meter.

The south side of the house had a lilac bush, lilies, and all the retaining blocks we removed from the front. We gave the blocks to a nice craigslister, then got to work digging out a large bed.

Here’s what we ended up with:

Pampas grass against house, dwarf Fountain Grass in front. Two ‘Cheyenne Spirit’ coneflowers, ‘Snow Cap’ Shasta Daisy in front. Three Munstead Dwarf Lavender in front of the window (so it doesn’t get blocked) and then a Russian Sage far right and Goldstrum Black Eyed Susan in front.

A better look at the sage and Black Eyed Susan set up, with another Snow Cap Daisy in front. More Lavender in front of the other window.

We rounded out the far side with two ‘Green Jewel’ coneflowers near the house (Ashford picked them!) with two ‘Red Riding Hood’ Phlox in front of them. One more Snow Cap daisy in front, and another Pampas grass far right with a Sedum in front.

Again, I’m happy that there is room to add more in here, but it still looks finished. We actually might bring the bed even farther out, depending on how I decide I want this area to look. The Pampas grasses will offer significant height at around 8 feet tall, but I might also add some tall skinny evergreens later on for winter color.

I’m happy that we were able to basically start from scratch and do exactly what we wanted, although it was crazy expensive. Including the premium mulch delivery, which was our first time not using bagged and it was AWESOME, we spent around $2200 on all the plants, soils, plant foods, and the pots. I think it was all money well spent. Now for some before and after side by sides, because those are always my favorite!

I’m excited to see how things look when they grow and fill in. We may move things around next summer if they don’t quite work in their current spots. I still want to get new lighting, mailbox and address numbers this summer, but I’m having a hard time deciding what I want. I hope you enjoyed this super long post, and please let me know what you think!

Source: http://www.russetstreetreno.com/2016/07/the-longest-landscaping-post-ever.html

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