You've got to start somewhere....
In purchasing a landscaped home, the second order of business, after trying to keep everything living, is to determine what everything is. We didn't make the purchases, after all. Well, maybe some of them. Here's what we've added:
Summer 2006
*Salvia
*Dahlias
*Lilium - Painted Pixie and Black Bird
*Bleeding Heart
Fall 2006
*Red Tulips (with red and yellow appearance in spring 2007)
Spring 2007
*GrandGala Apple - semi dwarf
*Red Fuji Apple - semi dwarf
*Intrepid Peach - standard
*Burbank Elberta Peach - standard
*BlackGold Sweet Cherry - semi dwarf
*Valencia Orange - potted/indoor
*Eversweet Strawberry - everbearer
*Asiatic Lilies - lilies with all these fruit bearers? Free with order, of course!
Planting Season Unknown - existing garden residents (identification a work in progress)
Hardy Aster ?
Goldnet Japanese Honeysuckle
Lamb’s Ear?
Hardy fern?
Huge Round Bush Green leaves, late flowering? ¼ inch wide 2 inch long narrow leaves
Dogwood? Green leaves with yellow white around edge
Some type of perennial flower
Some type of shrub – 2 inch oval faded green leaves with red new growth
Deep red (black) very small shrub ¼ inch oval leaves
Buttercup bulbs – white flower with yellow cup center
Flowering cherry tree
Climbing rose (yellow)
Hidden shrub long narrow leaves, white down center
Spreading roses – pink small flowers
Bush – unknown near death
Bulbs yellow petals, orange layers - daffodil variation?
Unknown basement tree
Ivy
Forsythia?
Sort of ivy small leaves with white outline
Rose with yellow red flowers
?Fiesta flower
Climbing rose yellow flower
Laurel shrub border
Black Tartarian sweet cherry semi dwarf
Gala apple - semi dwarf
Crabapple
Golden Delicious apple - semi dwarf
Unknown tree x 3 (sandbox)
3-4 types creeping/hanging ivy shrub some purple flowers some yellow green leaves
Concord grape
Red raspberry
Strawberries - June bearing
Blue spruce x 3
Small light purple bells
Summer flowering shrub
1 comment:
hey it is kendal from garden web.
when i say the first pictures of your wall to wall grass with trees around the perimeter, i thought you can't be helped. after seeing the work you have done i realized that you do get it and and were not responsible for the first pictures.
you have done good, great actually. just make sure you mulch those beds with 3+ inches of compost to hold in moisture if you have not already. you can buy it from the landfills for $30 a truckload if you have access to a pick-up.
as far as comments as to what more i would do, i would just say what i did on the garden web—cut and divide the lot into rooms, add shade and in your case, add a water feature. i am not too keen on streams as most people can't pull them off without making them look fake. they make water volcanoes from the highest point in the yard. if you do like streams, i would advise making it look natural and run it through a gully and hide the source so it looks like it crosses the yard naturally from a far distant source. dry stream beds are nice features too, just keep them natural looking.
if you can, retain all your runoff on your plot rather than sending it down to the gutter—free water! dry streams can be a great way to take the water from the downspout and across the yard.
if you have a vegetable garden, make it a feature rather than just a work space. look at formal European kitchen gardens. make raised boxes with hardscape or gravel paths and make it a place to visit, not work in. learn about no-till gardening and mix you veggies with each other in an ornamental way and add flowers. make a focal point in the middle with a fountain, fruit tree, arbor or something special. use garden oblisques instead of tomatoe cages. make the vegetable garden beautiful and easy to maintain. most people try to vegetable garden using industrial practices, it is ugly and much more time consuming.
don't be afraid to cut the yard in two. or more pieces. paths and secret places will get used by kids more than open lawn. they are more interesting to look at and to explore visually and literally. trellis and arches make great transitions through borders and hedges. grass is nice but is over used. a small patch serves as well as a large one unless you are playing sports and need the space.
i assume you have younger kids based on the trampoline. plant edible plants over ornamentals if all things are equal. you don't have to harvest them, but you have the option. plant bushes and vines with edible berries and vegetables like rubarb and asparagus as feature ornamentals or strawberries for ground cover. get creative and find odd things like currents, gooseberries, or hardy kiwi. teach the kids what they can eat and let them forage for snacks rather than come in for something out of the fridge. if i find a strawberry it is a rare occasion, the kids almost always beat me—they love and use the edible plants more than i do (the neighbor kids as well as my own). i can give you a fig for a pot on the patio, but you will need to bring it into the garage for winter. fruit also brings in birds.
my though is to make the plants serve a purpose, food, shade, beauty, pest control, or scent. the more purposes you get from one plant the better. learn about forest gardening as well and plant in layers. the more you pack in, the less maintenance your yard will be and the greater the visual effect.
post ideas to the Utah forum and you will get better answers for what to do here in-state.
the only thing i would advise you to do specifically is loose the blue spruce. it will get big fast and take up too much space at ground level. they also kill the soil around them. if you like pine trees i would recommend sub alpine firs, needles are soft, they are relatively small and smell good. they look very triangle and mountainy which is odd in some settings. austrian pines and black pines do well here and have a nice organic look to them. my favorite is the scotch pine. they do well here and though they start triangular, they get a round open top like a maple and sometime have multiple leaders. they lose lower branches so as not to take up ground space and get very tall giving you height without giving up square feet. mature scotch pine usually don't have any branches lower than 20 feet, so you can plant smaller trees like japanese maple and redbud below them as an understory. but blue spruces have no place in a yard in my opinion unless you have acres. yours is too close to the fence for how large it will be in 5 years.
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