The Perennial Border
I am ready to call it a season on the perennial border. We started by pulling out a lot of overgrown plants (and things we didn't really like) back in the beginning of June while we were bored waiting for the excavation of the back yard. And then we got just smidge busy with all of that, and then the late heat wave planting kind of killed the fun part. The good news is that, after three days of much cooler temperatures and a bit of rain, I think those plants have survived. I suppose another bit of good news is that I was able to give this area some attention now that the struggle to just keep everything wet enough to live is past, and I pulled three five-gallon buckets of weeds:
It's mostly some more goddamn crabgrass. So now it's cleaned up, and the perennial border looks like this:
Perhaps you are wondering where the plants are that I was nursing through the heat? In the top picture, you can find them if you follow the black line of the soaker hose. You may want to click on it to zoom in—they're not very big.
So the thing is, this is such an enormous area that it will definitely take a few seasons to plant enough to fill it all up and have those plants get big enough to make an impact. That doesn't make for much positive feedback with the weed pulling, because it still doesn't look very good. It looks like a lot of empty dirt instead of crabgrassy dirt. Woo. Hoo.
And I am having second thoughts about the plan anyway, because I think I should focus on getting some large areas of easy plants (think daylilies and hydrangeas) to make this go faster and take less maintenance. All plans hinge on the fact that when we eventually repaint the house, it will look like this:
See how nice those white rhododendrons look against the yellow? (Go ahead and click on the pic to enlarge and get a better look.) The original plan was to have mostly white flowers with some red hollyhocks at the corner of the house, red climbing roses up the corners of the porch, and some bee balm and lilies throughout. I think that would look fresh and bright, but unless I add a few white hydrangeas, it will take a TON of smaller plants to make it happen.
Since I was discouraged today by the sheer size of this (it's about 340 square feet), I thought about revising the red and white to include blue hydrangeas and orange daylilies. These are both flowers I love, and ones that do well here, but I don't know...it's a lot going on color-wise, and I tend to think less variety and more volume is better for impact. If I could be sure that I could give the hydrangeas enough acidity to get them to be a really deep, deep blue, I might go for it, but the powder blues and mauves that I see on hydrangeas in our neighborhood aren't very encouraging. For example, this is the lacecap growing in our bed right now:
That blue is just too blah—not strong enough against that ochre-y yellow we have planned.
In the meantime, unless I find things on big-time sale, it's too late in the season to invest in plants that might not make it. On the crappy side, that means this is a project that cannot be completed this year, and I hate not being able to cross something off my big life list. On the somewhat brighter side, there's plenty of time to tinker with the design.
Got any ideas? Feel free to comment.
It's mostly some more goddamn crabgrass. So now it's cleaned up, and the perennial border looks like this:
Perhaps you are wondering where the plants are that I was nursing through the heat? In the top picture, you can find them if you follow the black line of the soaker hose. You may want to click on it to zoom in—they're not very big.
So the thing is, this is such an enormous area that it will definitely take a few seasons to plant enough to fill it all up and have those plants get big enough to make an impact. That doesn't make for much positive feedback with the weed pulling, because it still doesn't look very good. It looks like a lot of empty dirt instead of crabgrassy dirt. Woo. Hoo.
And I am having second thoughts about the plan anyway, because I think I should focus on getting some large areas of easy plants (think daylilies and hydrangeas) to make this go faster and take less maintenance. All plans hinge on the fact that when we eventually repaint the house, it will look like this:
See how nice those white rhododendrons look against the yellow? (Go ahead and click on the pic to enlarge and get a better look.) The original plan was to have mostly white flowers with some red hollyhocks at the corner of the house, red climbing roses up the corners of the porch, and some bee balm and lilies throughout. I think that would look fresh and bright, but unless I add a few white hydrangeas, it will take a TON of smaller plants to make it happen.
Since I was discouraged today by the sheer size of this (it's about 340 square feet), I thought about revising the red and white to include blue hydrangeas and orange daylilies. These are both flowers I love, and ones that do well here, but I don't know...it's a lot going on color-wise, and I tend to think less variety and more volume is better for impact. If I could be sure that I could give the hydrangeas enough acidity to get them to be a really deep, deep blue, I might go for it, but the powder blues and mauves that I see on hydrangeas in our neighborhood aren't very encouraging. For example, this is the lacecap growing in our bed right now:
That blue is just too blah—not strong enough against that ochre-y yellow we have planned.
In the meantime, unless I find things on big-time sale, it's too late in the season to invest in plants that might not make it. On the crappy side, that means this is a project that cannot be completed this year, and I hate not being able to cross something off my big life list. On the somewhat brighter side, there's plenty of time to tinker with the design.
Got any ideas? Feel free to comment.
I'm working on a similar puzzle. We're repainting our house in a couple of weeks, grayish blue (from cream yellow), and it's hard to visualize what the existing flowers will look like with it. We ripped out a bunch of scraggly yews from the front yard and I know have some hostas and hydrangeas there, but it needs more, and I'm not sure what to go with. I tend to go for lots of color though, so I think you're quite disciplined for the two-color scheme. It's also hard to visualize what the plants will look like once they grow up (I'm cheap, so I tend to buy smaller plants, since I know that our soil is so rich that plants grow quickly here).
ReplyDeleteThat's not advice, but commiseration, which is worth something, yes? a half penny?
I bet lots of color will really work against a neutral(ish) background like grayish blue. I feel like that's neutral in flower-world, since there's really not much that's blue (and what "blue" there is I usually think is a big fat lie because it's purple).
ReplyDeleteI think I do ok visualizing what things will look like when they're bigger. (In fact, I feel like I spend so much time visualizing what things will eventually look like that sometimes it's actually anti-climactic to, say paint a room, because I've been seeing it re-done in my head for so long.) What I suck at, though, is visualizing the timetable of blooming--It's hard for me to keep that extra ball in the air. So I'm trying to pick things with a long bloom season, and with fewer colors, I can't really mess up the timing for a horrible clash.
I think I also keep the color scheme limited because there's a whole range on the color wheel that I hate: anything between a true red and a true violet (and really, I like a blue-violet a lot better). All those pinkish purples and fuschias and rhododendron colors make me want to barf--the one exception being a nice coneflower maybe. MAYBE.
Is your yard too shady for daylilies? I bet oranges and yellows would look good as a contrast color. Post pictures when you're done!