February Landscaping Changes

We've been making changes to the landscaping in the last few weeks. The prior homeowners had had the property professionally landscaped, much of which we like, some of which we wanted to change.

There were nandina on the left and right of the lower driveway. I don't particularly love nandina, but at least on the left of the driveway the nandina were planted in a mass planting clump.

On the right of the driveway, the six nandina were planted and sheared into cotton ball fluffs, which we disliked. So, we marked them for removal--and actually, our landscape man who removed them had use for them, so he saved them for transplant on another property, which is great.

At the top of the driveway were ten shrub roses which didn't do fantastically well there. A couple of years ago we'd had quite a few large trees felled to open up more sunlight so we had our eyes on this area for a possible vegetable garden. We realized that the shrub roses might look very nice along the right of the driveway, replacing those nandina.

And here they are, eight transplanted pink shrub roses (two weren't good candidates to move). We will see how they fare!

We had a box hedge torn out on the left of the sidewalk that leads to our side porch. It was a handsome and well-formed hedge, but planted too close in a very "over-shrubbed" area. (In previous years, we'd torn out two 10-foot tall camelias planted beneath our window and an abelia squeezed in there too.) Now we have some bare dirt but at least we can easily traverse the sidewalk instead of feeling like we're threading a needle. We are considering a color spot for the area or maybe a little Marian garden. Whatever we plant, it will be low and small and not a shrub.

Meanwhile, our neighbor had two frames he hadn't ended up using for raised bed gardening, so he gave them to us.

The kids and I mixed up the soil and placed string for square foot gardening. (Gardener's Supply Company has a fantastic free tool for planning a garden!)

Then we put up a deer fence, whose success will have to be born out. We know we have deer in our yard, but we don't know how often they dine on our plants and we don't know if this will deter our particular deer. The fence is only four feet high and deer can jump feet higher than that, but we're hoping the small "landing pad" area and other plants nearby will make it not worthwhile for them.

We plan to start planting vegetables in the coming weeks.

The temperature reached 82 degrees on Thursday, the first day of March, so mid-day I had to break-out the bin of summer clothing for my sweltering children!