garden_priestess

Very busy with work and gardens.

We had the 35-year-old overgrown foundation junipers removed from two sides of our house, and the lawn stripped. Also had a circular patio installed - wonderful textured pavers in concentric rings, with a flower bed all around. I've been busy designing and planting all the new beds, and since we're in a drought this summer, I spend lots of time watering. Larry designed an irrigation system that has helped a lot. (Thank goodness we get our water from Lake Michigan, so we don't have watering restrictions.) Larry also dug holes and helped plant the major shrubs, including sculpting two low mounds into our flat front yard for the trees.

Here's a partial list of the major plantings:

Korean spice viburnum
Rose-glow barberry
dwarf globe blue spruce
6 icee blue ground-cover junipers
dwarf Japanese garden juniper
garnet Japanese maple tree
2 Holmstrup eastern arborvitae
Blue Mist spirea
Bushy Blue Bell clematis
The President clematis
Gipsy Queen clematis
Etoile Violette clematis
purpleleaf sand cherry
3 gro-low fragrant sumac
Wentworth American Cranberrybush
5 Frosty potentilla
Harry Lauder's Walking Stick (contorted hazelnut)
Isanti dogwood (for the wonderful red stems in winter)
Flower Carpet Appleblossom Rose
3 Green Velvet Boxwood
3 Ebony Knight Mondo Grass

Also dozens of perennials - daylilies, 3 kinds of geraniums, blue clips, Irish moss, purple coral bells, bleeding hearts, variegated spurge, sedums, creeping phlox, 4 kinds of hostas, tiarellas, and about 30 new types of iris. I'm hoping to plant the last of the iris this weekend, and next weekend I can start moving daylilies from the shady spot they're currently inhabiting into the new front yard garden.

I had hoped to redesign and replant the North end of the oldest garden this summer, but I don't think it's going to happen. Perhaps I'll do the design work over the winter and take a week of vacation in the spring to do the digging and planting.

Most of the other gardens have been easy to care for this year - the shade garden and the sunny corner garden need minimal weeding and occasional dead-heading. The herb garden is weedy and out of control, and needs a complete redesign. That's another project for next summer.

And I really enjoy sitting on the patio, watching the birds and butterflies and bees, and looking at the gardens.