Total Bedlam

Well, bedlam may be somewhat harsh, but the property owner did contact me saying she needed help, and soon.

Actually I have seen and worked with much worse, but this chaos was confined to such a small space. They great side of this is that there were so many wonderful plants to work with. Those not being the weeds and volunteers, mostly the baby japanese (perhaps Fuji) apple trees seeded from above.

Other than the interest and enthusiasm I felt during my initial property visit with the customer, I know she loves her plants as she had done a wonderful job with the variety of flowers and colors she had installed on both sides of her front entrance in window boxes and brick raised plant beds.

Left is the same area as above after the project was complete. There was some removal, pruning (mainly thinning and heading cuts for spacing) more so than trimming, a lot of clean up and attention to detail. No, I did not give the crepe myrtle to the right its shape. It's going to need some time to recover from the tree which was stealing all its glory, and sunlight.

The next area, I imagined, would not be so involved except for transplanting the somewhat mature sago palm from near obscurity to around center of the bed.

The customer told me rarely, or if ever, does she need to trim the small boxwood hedge and it looks as if it gets attention weekly. I have never seen the roots of boxwoods travel so densely, so far.

I've seen other shrubs with their root system putting up suckers far away, usually from lack of sunlight. If the main body of some plants is not getting the sun it needs, then it wants to bask in its rays somehow.

This was a system of multiple shallow roots like I've never seen before and an adjacent wall was completely bordered by young boxwoods and they were coming up everywhere.

They had to come out, which meant the intertwined asiatic jasmine, which was becoming such a beautiful ground cover in both beds, had to come out as well.

This did not aid in removing the sago palm which I hope will survive the transition.