I posted last week about my flagstone border, but here's a more complete update on the state of our back yard. After planting some fountain grasses and junipers in April, my next wave of plantings were all given to me by family.
My grandma gave me some variegated hostas...
and a small variegated iris. The leaves are kind of droopy, but I'm crossing my fingers it will pull through.
And Dan's mom dug up some of her ferns.
All low-maintenance plants, thank goodness, though I may have to water the iris once in a while. And they all should spread and get much bigger throughout the years.
I also transplanted some of my lamb's ear from our front landscaping. (They are still recovering from the move.) I love these plants; the leaves are super soft like velvet and they grow like crazy.
Everything is still looking scrawny, though. Even the fountain grasses and juniper I planted more than a month ago hardly look any bigger.
Well, except for this funny little cattail on one of them.
Primarily, I planted things in big blocks for maximum impact. Honestly, I don't really know what I'm doing here. Let's hope it doesn't look like garbage when it fills in. It's kind of hard to tell what things are from far away, so here's a labeled photo.
- Blue Rug Juniper
- Lamb's ear
- Old rotting tree stump
- Ferns
- Daylilies (already in this spot, more off photo to the right)
- Variegated hostas
- Variegated iris
- Purple fountain grasses
Despite all the progress, there is still more to do. We still have a rotting tree stump to contend with. I've been avoiding planting anything too close to it, so things look a bit empty in the middle of the bed. Eventually, if we are able to remove enough of the roots, I would love to be able to plant an ornamental tree of some kind. Maybe even an apple tree. Wouldn't that be fun?
And the back left corner of the yard needs serious help.
We have been slowly chipping away at this old raised garden bed that we affectionately refer to as "the graves." With all the junk I've been digging out of the ground, we are in need of fill dirt, so it's lucky we have some!
The yard still needs work and time, but it already looks so much better than it did last year. I can't imagine trying to keep Elise out of that poison ivy jungle from a year ago.
(That's our neighbor's shed, so I try to leave it out of the photos, but it's a nice frame of reference.)
For now I will be taking a brief pause from planting to work on other things. There is still a lot of work to do (including a lot of weed pulling), but I want to see how things fill in before I plant anything else.