Easter & Flowerbeds Revisited

Basically, my Easter decorations are exactly the same as last year. Nothing new, nothing different (except Lola doesn't have the weird post-iv hair cut on her front legs!). If you are new and want to see them, or if you want a refresher, click HERE

Now for the flowerbeds. I landscaped the front of my house on the first Good Friday after I bought my house, so that would be 4 years ago. I still think it was a huge improvement, but I have some complaints.

Complaint #1: I get tired of planting so many annuals every stinking year. Too much work. So much money. Then it all starts to go to pot in the heat of our horrible summers and looks like crap anyway!

Complaint #2: It relates to #1. Where the annuals are is either bare in the winter or I have to plant winter stuff. I have done both. I don't like the first, but the second necessitates running out when a super cold front is headed our way and digging up my flowers and putting them in the garage until the cold spell passes, then replanting, and repeat on the next front that blows through. It's for the birds folks, or at least someone who doesn't basically work two jobs!

Complaint #3: Some small ferns that I planted 4 years ago haven't lived up to expectations. The darn things never died, but then never really thrived.

So, I asked my uncle a while back to come help me re-do my bed. I really have no idea what I'm doing and he is a landscaping genius, so thus the help request. I haven't ever gotten him up here. I did receive a cryptic iphone photo of a shrub and the information "Japanese Yew", so I'm starting to think that might be the extent of the help that I'm going to get anytime soon. So, I headed from nursery to nursery today with the task of re-doing my front bed in mind.

Goal: Plant things that will be evergreen and make the bed require very little annual planting.

Where did I start? Boulder shopping.

I bought two boulders (212 pounds of boulders in case you cared). Do they meet my requirements? Looks the same all year: check! Doesn't need replacing every year: check! Great start, right?

Now, keeping in mind, I'm clueless..I decided that since Hydrangeas are one of my top 2 favorite flowers, I was going to plant me some hydrangeas! Try to follow along with my fancy drawn sophisticated plans here...

I'm going to move those ferns (the ones under the script) and plant the hydrangeas in their place

Here are some more of the plans...

Those ferns are moving up a few feet, monkey grass is going to go in the circle in front of the tree (Solid green or green and white variegated? Cast your vote!), then I'm going to plant 3 Japanese Yews, and will have a little bit of room for some color up front (What? I haven't decided yet! Get off my back will you! How many decisions do you expect me to make in one day?)

The color void will be helped out by 3 or 4 pots of flowers in front of my garage area. I bought hot pink, light pink, light purple, and bright purple impatients to go there again this year since they did so swimmingly last year.

So that's the plan folks. We'll see if it looks okay or totally craptastic when it's all done!

Anyone want to come dig some holes for me?