Why I Oughta...

Above is a look at the four boxwoods that are planted right outside of our Kitchen windows next to the foundation.  I last posted a photo of these four shrubs back in April of this year when I was taking off the Winter Burn from them and shaping them a little bit.   They've really grown quite a bit and green'd up on their tips in a nice way. A lot of boxwoods in our neighborhood took hard hits from Winter Burn this past Winter - including a few of ours in front - but these seem to have totally recovered nicely.  The two in front are now larger than the two in back.  I was initially thinking of clipping these into nicely shaped orbs, but now that I've seen the Jacques Wirtz-inspired hedge of boxwoods outside of the Fedex World Headquarters , I'm thinking I can grow these together and make a more cloud-like shape out of all four of them.  The other thing to note in this [ Garden Diary ] post is the other plant in the photo.  No...it isn't a weed.  Well, not a

About a week ago, I posted a photo showing the new little collection of Hicks Upright Yews that I picked up at Home Depot for a song with the intention of planting a hedge in the back.  Welp...I started that project this week. If you've been following along, I'm using this Bunny Williams sweeping yew hedge as inspiration and after I get these established, I'm going to try to prune them into curving, swooping shapes. I started to place them out and realized that the spacing wasn't going to work.  What you see here above and below is 3' (36") spacing between the centers of the pots.  Looks too far apart to me. So, off I went to pick up 3 more shrubs and shrunk the gap down to 30".   And after I dug the holes ( remembering Ralph Snodsmith's advice about digging the holes !!!), I stuck them in the ground and threw some mulch that I had on hand on top of them.  Here's the immediate aftermath of planting them.  I have to clean u

That's a wheelbarrow full of 12 2# Upright Hicks Yews that are destined for our backyard.  #5 on my 2019 Garden To-Do List was to get some Yews into our yard with a hedge and now that I've waited for these to go on sale, I'm this much closer to getting this item crossed off my list.  What's the inspiration for these?  This curvy, swooping hedge from Bunny Williams' Instagram .    I bought Yews that were originally marked for $34.99 that Home Depot discounted all the way down to $9. I bought Upright Hicks Yews - which Monrovia describes thusly : An excellent evergreen shrub for tall hedges and privacy screens. The long, upright-growing branches with dense, glossy, dark green foliage naturally form a narrow, columnar habit that works well as a foundation plant, or placed in pairs at entries or doorways.  I've talked about my love of all things columnar - and that love extends to shrubs. The spacing on the back of the card claims 8' to 12', bu

A few weeks back, I posted about how I fertilized the set of Frans Fontaine European Hornbeam trees and posted a photo of a few of them that are right outside of our screened porch.  In a post from a few weeks back about our flowering Cherry, someone asked in the comments how these were doing .  Figured it warranted an update. Today, here's a few photos showing these trees in their late Spring/early summer foliage.    You can see that they've all leaf'd out in a major way and they look great for year two.  I wasn't worried too much about these coming back, but I do have to admit that I am relieved that they did.  However....some of these do, indeed, look better - or more full - than others. First, the top photo that shows four of the trees to the left from our patio.  These are all about the same in terms of thickness, lushness, etc.  They're all close to the same height and you can see that a couple of them have a really nice, thick set of leaves near the

Back in 2017, I showed part of our landscape plant that was just outside of our kitchen window that called for a variety of perennials and some shrubs including Green Velvet Boxwoods.  You can see the plan here in this post from October 2017 .  Here's a look at that portion of the plan : The plan called for four Green Velvet Boxwood plants.  You can see in the photo at the top of this post that we indeed, planted four of them.  I ended up staggering them a little differently than the plan called for, but they're mostly in the same spot.  The reason for clustering them more closely to the window well is to fit in a spot for our grill.  This [ Garden Diary ] post can be found in the feed over on Hornbeam Hill .  This post is to talk about shaping of these boxwoods.  We have a set of these in our front yard beds directly in front of our porch that you can see in this post that we're trying to let grow a bit.  I'd like them to get larger, but the ones in back?

Just five days ago, I posted for all to see my top 10 to-do items for our yard and garden in 2019 .  There were some significant items on there like dealing with trees and adding another espalier, but item #10 talked about planning for the 'outer walking path'.  I posted about considering a path like that in August of last year and then also discussed the idea of what material is right:  decomposed granite .   That path would wind all the way to the back rear portion of our yard.  And that's where this post comes in.  To get my head wrapped around some items in the yard this Spring, I pulled out the landscape plan and revisited parts of it.  Our plan was drafted by our landscape designer and I've shared portions of it here on the blog.  Here's the links to the various snapshots: Our southern fence line with Hydrangeas and allium One of our rear foundation beds outside of our kitchen A look at the north fence line that we put the Frans Fontaine Europea

Yesterday, I posted about the idea of gabion walls in our backyard  and today I'm noodling hedges.  Yeah..hedges.   I came across this photo of Bunny Williams' garden/yard on Instagram a few months back and have it filed away as something interesting to consider for the backyard.  Take a peek: View this post on Instagram In memory of Jacques Wirtz. Eight years ago a Giulian into dear fiends took a tour to see the gardens of Mr Wirtz in Belgium we were lucky to have met him And see his garden and I came home with so many ideas especially his hedges. I was inspired to create this curved hedge which as taken almost all this time to really come into its own and every time I look at it I think of him. What a gift he gave to all who love gardens A post shared by Bunny Williams (@bunnys_eye) on Aug 4, 2018 at 12:16pm PDT Those curves are something, right?  She mentions that the inspiration for her was Jacques Wirtz.  Wh

I've posted a few times about our plan to add some European Hornbeams to the side yard alongside of our screened porch to provide some privacy from our neighbor's house.  In the photo above, you see the run of fence that will soon be lined with some 2.5" caliper trees.  You can go back to this post to see the drawing of where they are located , but they're going to cling to the fenceline and, I hope, peek over the top of the fence.  In the photo above, you can also see the grade difference with the porch on the left being a good four or five feet above where the bottom of the fence is located.  Once these trees mature a bit, they'll end up growing into a hedge of sorts ( like this ) and we'll be able to enjoy the screened porch without looking at our neighbors smoking cigarettes on their back stoop.  With April here, I'm just waiting word from the landscaper as to when these trees can be dug up and planted in our yard.  I took this photo a few week

Image above via ThinkingOutsideTheBoxwood I've posted quite a bit about the various trees and plantings in our #newoldbackyard this past year, but I just looked back in the archives and discovered that I haven't posted about one of the most important (and highly anticipated) tree projects on the docket.  And...that tree project *is* a series of Frans Fontaine European Hornbeam trees along the northern fence line near where our screened porch is located.   The image above - which isn't mine - gives you a sense for what we're going for with this allee of hornbeams and also shows how some closely planted Frans Fontaine Hornbeams grow to form a nice privacy hedge.   This is part of the new - and mostly final - landscape plan that was delivered to us in September.  I first posted a look at it in early October with a look at some of the hydrangea beds along the south property line  and then a look at some of the foundation beds near the rear of the house a few days