6.05.2006

Landscaping

Over a year ago, we had a landscape architect design a new front yard for the house. Unfortunately, it was for the "old" house. We decided to do the remodel after we had the landscape plans done. It was a little backward, but what the heck. Baron Brothers Nursery charged less than $600 for the design service and $350 of that came back to us as a credit when we bought plants from them. All the work Dick has been doing on the front yard - the flagstone path, sprinkler system, etc. - has been in accordance with "the plan".

Today we were finally ready to take advantage of the credit. Since we are doing the work ourselves - and the 'extras' we put into the house wiped out the landscaping budget - we're landscaping one section of the yard at a time. We made a list of the plants we needed and took it to Baron Brothers. After about an hour - and one "bee alert" when a small swarm decided that the nursery looked like a good landing spot - we tallied up our total. They didn't have everything that was on our list, but if it was on the list and they had it in stock, we bought it. Remember that $350 credit? Our bill came to $350.70. I am not kidding. They wrote off the .70 and called it even.

Today's project was the lower left section between the driveway and the flagstone path. This is what it looked like this morning:

And this is what it looks like tonight:
Nice, huh? We went with an English country garden theme, with flowers in purples, oranges and yellows. We planted:

Variegated Agapanthus -

Lambs Ears (appropriate for a spinner)
Sweet Lavender -
Russian Sage -
Chinese Razzleberri Tree (it's hard to tell in the photo, but the leaves are a lovely red. And it will flower in the fall.)
Ground Morning Glory -
Variegated Society Garlic -
Daylily -
Coreopsis -
Shasta Daisy -
I don't remember the name of this one - it's a geranium of some sort.
Bronze Flax -
White Fornight Lily -
We still need to purchase 3 Limelights and 1 Chinese Rassleberri bush to finish this section.

If I have the wrong names on the plants, please don't tell me. Reading landscape blueprints is hard - at least for me. The planting took a lot longer than it should have since I kept getting confused as to which plant went with which number on the drawing. It didn't help that most of the plants did not have tags. I'm just saying. It wasn't all my fault. Ok. It really was. Dick has an amazing amount of patience.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Elisa...I have just discovered the blog...have been gone and busy...love this landscape and the house ...beautiful!

Anonymous said...

BEAUTIFUL! Can't wait to see it in person. Planting takes a long time anyway. Putting those flowers in my atrium, and they went where ever I wanted, took hours. So, you did GOOD :)
It really looks great!

Anonymous said...

Your yard looks great, not my atrium. That came out wrong. lol

Anonymous said...

Hi - I came across your Blog by a tag line from Spinner's Group on Yahoo! I loved reading this page, one of the few I have completely read. You are a great writer.
Anyway, I had to laugh at the gardening, because my DH and I just did the same thing - I lost the tags also and forgot where some items went, too! But, all turned out well, as I'm sure yours did too. Living in Pennsylvania, I don't think I get quite the compliment of plants that you do; however, when I saw the pic of the Lamb's Ear, I gasped! I found them for the first time ever this spring and fell in love with this beautiful foilage. People in the nursery were walking by watching me 'pet' this leaf. I even got a few others sucked in by going -- "You HAVE to touch this!" and, of course, most did; so, when DH got back with the 'MUCH LARGER' cart, he got more annunation for my competency hearing one day (LOL).
Thanks for the -----!

Elisa said...

Funny you should mention 'petting' the lamb's ear. That's what the landscape guy had me do; it's amazing how soft and silky those silly leaves are. And it's even funnier to watch the neighbors stroll by the house and try to nonchalantly bend down to feel the leaves. LOL