Fences serve numerous purposes: keeping things in (or out), looking good in and of themselves, acting as screens, being a place to grow yet more plants. Read more »
design ideas for small yards
March – Horizontal fencing
PLANT UPDATE – October, red twig dogwood, etc.
Red twig dogwoods with heavenly bamboo and ceanothus (far right), October 2012
One of my earliest posts showed leafless red twig dogwoods (Cornus sp.) backed by heavenly bamboo (Nandina domestica) and Ceanothus. It was a great winter/early spring plant grouping. Read more »
October – Colorful seasonal screen
Behind this riot of zinnias lie a couple of vegetable beds. The veg beds are neither ugly nor particularly ornamental and right behind the zinnias are raspberries which, lets be honest, simply do not have a “pretty” season. A tasty season, oh yes, but even in flower and fruit they are gangly things. Read more »
September – Consider a front yard moor for endless color
Photo taken at the Center for Urban Horticulture 9/12/2012
Seattle is full of heaths and heathers – you see them dripping down rockeries all over the city. What you rarely see is a mixed planting of just heaths and heathers which is a pity because they can make a glorious, ever-changing tapestry. The Center for Urban Horticulture has put together just such a planting – it is evergreen, colorful year round and low maintenance. Consider turning your front yard into a tiny Scottish moor – assuming you don’t want to play soccer there. Read more »
September – A seasonal hedge
A summer only hedge
People often don’t hang out in their front yards – too public. You can put up a fence, or a hedge tall enough to give privacy or you can have your hedge and eat it too. Read more »
August – What to do with that 12″ wide garden bed
Germander, Teucrium chamaedrys
Back when I did garden design I would occasionally want to drive my head into a wall at some of the design decisions that I found in the garden. Parsimonious sidewalks 3′ wide (or even less) with measly 2′ beds on either side. Inevitably those 2′ beds would be planted with hydrangeas or rhodies, or camellias, or heaven-help-us prickly junipers, shrubs way wider than 2′. Of course they got hacked. Read more »
July – Allium sphaerocephalon, drumstick allium
A. sphaerocephalon with Sedum (pale green) and a penstemon (possibly ‘Blackbird’) with matching blooms
Maroon balls on sticks definitely liven up the garden. Often mixed plantings meld into one big mish-mash so you need plants that will stop the eye. The balls of Allium sphaerocephalon, the drumstick allium, dancing among other plants definitely get your attention – adding interest, even whimsy to the garden. Read more »
July – alternatives to the standard picket fence
Some people are happy to sit in their front yard, chatting with the world as it walk by. I wish I was that kind of person but I’m not. If I’m going to sit out front I need to at least have the illusion of privacy. This can be done with plants of course, but in small urban yards where every square foot matters, a fence may be a better choice. Read more »
PLANT UPDATE – Low maintenance plants disguise a wall in Seattle’s Greenlake neighborhood
April, 2012 – Erica sp (heath) below, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (kinnikinnik) dangling and Lavandula angustifolia at very top
Here’s the first plant update for my very first posting. Read more »
June – adding color to the shade garden
Angelica sylvestris ‘Vicar’s Mead’
In a recent post on low maintenance groundcovers for shade, I showed a garden with several tough, good-looking evergreen shrubs (Viburnum davidii, Taxus sp, Pachysandra terminalis) that make admirable groundcovers but the planting lacked color and could also use some more textural variety. Here are a few plants that could be added to the plants from that post to liven up the garden and give it more variety throughout the seasons. Read more »
Books to try
