Made in the Shade...Somewhat

After

There are all sorts of demands, objectives and other necessities in our lives which may come before one has that chance to begin to address restoring a property's landscape. But, when that opportunity or time occurs it is wonderful to sit down and walk around with the property owner to find that one place to start.

For this customer it was a bed below the living room window, bordered by the driveway and front entrance walkway - what a great place to begin.

This is a somewhat shaded area, yet it does receive small doses of direct sunlight during the day and some filtered sunlight in the afternoon. There are two mature hardwoods in the front yard with large crowns, and canopies beginning at a rather substantial height, but we did recently remove one large lower branch from one of the trees to increase the odds of some direct afternoon sunlight reaching the bed - of course, time of year will matter. We also did so to allow more sunlight to reach the lawn as we also recently aerated the soil, adjusted the pH and applied fertilizer, after we tested the soil.

Before

The pH in the plant bed tested fine and although the soil could use some fertilizer, most nursery-bought plants contain fertilizer. I am almost always use a mix of existing soil and mushroom compost for planting holes, but in this case I actually turned over all the soil in the bed and blended in mushroom compost, not just for each individual plant.

The plants installed were:

Center Rear - Temple Bell Pieris (Pieris japonica 'Temple Bells')
Scattered - Mojo® Ptittosporum (Pittosporum tobira 'CNI Three' PP16188) and Miniature Gardenia (Gardenia jasminoides 'Radicans')

Border - Variegated Lilyturf a.k.a. Monkey Grass (Liriope muscari 'Variegata')

Eventually, the gardenias and pittosporums will reach heights to hide the foundation vents, while not breaching the window, and spread to fill the area. The monkey grasses will grow toward the walkway border and one another.

The center piece, temple bell pieris, may eventually breach the window, but will be manageable at such height if the owner chooses to do so.

Before

The owner did want low maintenance plants while also having some varying colors throughout the year. All plants are evergreen and offer different colors by flower or foliage. 

For a relatively small space, we thought pine bark nuggets were economical and because we did not use the minis, it can be lightly blown to remove fallen leaves.

This goes along with our Every Little Step practice which works well for many customers.

After