osprey94's Blog

Before and After
Apr 13, 2008 | 7:16 AM PST

Oooh, I love before and afters!

The path up to the potting shed has always been narrow, awkward and lined with boxwoods. It was close to impossible to get the mower in and out of the door of the shed. So, we finally did something about it. Here's the before pic of the shed:

And, now...the after:

I moved the boxwoods to some temporary beds. I don't know what I'm going to do with them yet. I took the rocks that lined the path and used them to frame the new gravel area. D and I dumped and smoothed the gravel and then we made a new mounded bed on the side of the shed:

Now, I just have to figure out what I will plant here. I have a lilac I've been trying to find a spot for. I think I'll put it here as the anchor for this bed. Then, I want to put in a few evergreen shrubs and some perennials.

I'm currently trying to make a list of all the plants I have that I want to move and see if I can group them up into beds that have a nice balance of evergreen/deciduous/mult-seaso
n color/interest.

I'm using an excel worksheet with columns for light needs/bloom time/evergreen or deciduous/form, etc.

So far, I have:

 

name                  light needs              form                  blooming season

rosemary            full to part      evergreen shrub          summer

lonicera (2)              ?                evergreen shrub

wild rose                  ?                 deciduous
shrub         summer

boxwood(4)              ?                 evergreen
shrub      

small rhodies(4) shade            evergreen shrub     spring/summer

Okay, that didn't paste very well. I can't get that "summer" to move over to the bloom column when I post, but you get the idea. I'm maybe halfway done with this list.

It's supposed to rain again starting this afternoon, so I'm going to plant the stewartia in the deck bed and the lilac in the shed bed. I'm still not sure what to do with the mock orange (Philadelphus), but I guess I'll just put it in the deck bed, even though I'd wanted Mexican orange (Choisya). If I can find the choisya, I'll just cluster them around the Philadelphus.

Yesterday, I made a list of some groundcover ideas to replace the heath in the design I'm using as inspiration for the deck bed. Here's what I came up with:

evergreen candytuft (my current fave)

blue star creeper

wintergreen

creeping mahonia

cotoneaster dammeri

cornus canadensis (bunchberry)

Dragon's blood sedum

I know I have to just go with whatever I can find at the nurseries, but I wish I could have my pick of all of these.

Mason bee update - two holes in the cocoon tubes. No sign of them cementing their eggs into the house, yet.

Also, D discovered a swarm of little black flying-ant-looking insects in the back field when he was mowing. They were VERY numerous. I wonder what they are?

My spinach and lettuce are very slowly growing. I'm going to wait until they're a few centimeters tall and then thin them a little with some scissors, I guess. Today we're going to try to work on the footprint for the greenhouse, because we skipped it last night. Too tired.

I'm off to plant that stewartia!