Hey gang! Weezie was sweet enough to send me a polite kick in the a**, and I realize that I never followed up on this posting! Well, the reason I've not been too much in evidence on the boards is because I've been busy finally making the dream a reality: The front of the house is all done:
Day one we (my wife and I) pulled out the front lawn - 11 tons of earth and dead grass!! We Rounduped everything, and then called in the experts...
Day two had a sprinkler company install new sprinklers, and excavate the center 800 sq.feet of the 1200 sq. foot plot down to a 3.5 inch depth. So now we had sprinklers in, and a hard earth mound all around the edge at 5-6 feet width from the sides. In the middle was a lower level (by 3.5 inches), ready for filling with the gravel...I had designed a courtyard setup (can you picture it, or have my descriptive powers gone the way of my fingernails in this past month?... )
Spent the next week or two watering the earth to see if any grass or
weed seed had survived the roundup. Then went and picked up two truckloads of compost and shoveled that onto the edging planting beds (the previously mentioned 5-6 wide mounds). Rented an enormous rototiller, and tried to churn up 50-year old packed clay soil, with some success…
Then what...lemme see...oh yes! The sprinkler guys came back and helped put in the gravel. Had 10 tons of 3/4 gravel trucked in and 10 tons of pea gravel to go on top of that. We put in 5" high Black Diamond edging all around the central "dip", and then wheelbarrowed in the 3/4 gravel, raking it all across the space to a depth of about 1.5 inches. We then rolled that down, and then raked 1.5 inches of the pea gravel on top. Now the courtyard was done. I painted the banister and pillar (which are wrought iron) by the front door, and got ready for the final stage:
With your help, I’ve been researching potential
plants for a lonnnng time now, and finally went to the nursery to pick up my selections:
50 Pittosporum to create a hedge all around the edge
several flats of Alyssum to sit at the base of the hedge and hide the "feet of the bushes"
a couple of flats of Snapdragons on the inside of the hedge line
A Bailey's Acacia
treeA Red Plum
treeA Xitalpa
treeA Crepe Myrtle (which I'm not sure will survive - seems a little dead)
A flat of Coleus
A few Dusty Millers
Some Butterfly Bushes
Daylilies of various shades
Penstemon
Agapanthus
Dianthus
Vinca Minor
Liriope
Pampas Grass
Zebra Grass
Russian Sage
Blue Star
I also transplanted from the back garden: A Peach
tree, which I planted in a large pot, and 20 or so irises...
The day after I planted everything (and boy did the muscles complain!) it began pouring for the first time this year. This was 3 days ago, and it hasn't stopped since!! I'm worried the newly planted and transplanted
flowers, bushes, et al will drown, but I'm just keeping my fingers crossed and hoping…
btw, I posted this reply in Landscape trials as well, under "Need ideas for front of House!". In the interest of not avoiding two similar discussion forums, I invite you to continue this chat there, if that's not inconvenient,
Here\'s the link...I think