Thanks for the replies and compliments. I'll try to answer your questions. It's hard to tell from the picture, but there is a flower bed on the other side adjacent to my house. You can barely see it on the 1st after picture. The grass pathway runs right between the two flower beds. Here is a picture of the flower bed by the side of the house. The crepe myrtle has been there for a number of years. The pathway needed to be a certain width (to please DH and his riding lawnmower), so I just took a string that width and sprayed where I wanted the flower beds to be (it's not a straight shot from gate to back porch as it 'curves'). The hardest part was removing the grass, and DS talked me into renting a sod cutter, which I am so glad he did. It made the job sooo much easier. It removed about 2" of the top of the soil, and got most of the grass out. I placed edging down (it's a little squiggly but the plants hang over and hide it), then planted the plants, and added about 2" of mulch, which brought the soil level back up to the level of the grass pathway. This project was done last August, so it is now 1 year old. For plants, I used pretty much what was available, but I predominately wanted yellow and red flowers. I have small (about 2' tall) cannas, coreopsis, lambs ear, bulbine, hot lips sage, sedum, salvia, coneflowers, iris, yellow barberries, and some 'special' plants (one each) of brugmasia (sp?) and tea tree. I also added some evergreen shrubs to fill out this large space and to have something to look at in the winter. They include a dwarf buford holly at the end, heleri hollies, a couple of yews (not doing good in our heat), and dwarf indian hawthornes. The rock rose I planted has been the biggest 'filler' plant, and I have also recently purchased some lily bulbs for other places that need some filling in. The flower bed on the house side has a portion that is mostly shade and in that area I filled in with more hollies, hydrangeas, hostas and ferns. We have a sprinkler system, but we also use a watering tractor that pulls along a hose and is easy to put right down the middle of the path. I would definitely recommend the sod cutter. Hauling the mulch was the worst part, but it has not been bad to keep maintained, and the bees and butterflies are really loving it.

Absolutely inspiring!!!! I can't believe how much larger it looks with all the plantings, paths and "bones". It makes me feel like "I can do it" when I get inspired to take on a job that just seems too big. I just love everything about it. You should pat yourselves on the back for a job well done. Carol

Thanks, Kim! I appreciate it. The design will work in a larger space. Make sure you give yourself more room to mow the grass than I did. Our garden is only sixty-three feet long and thirty-three feet wide. The real secret wrt the lack of space for mowing in our garden... is... that I made a mistake, and used the second draft when I laid it out and started digging...instead of using the final draft. The differences, on paper, were relatively minor. In practice it was a mistake of three feet in the total width of the garden. By the time I noticed the mistake, it was much too late in the process and I didn't want to start over. That mistake gave us most of the long bed, where the glads and blazing stars currently live. In time, that same long bed will have goji berries and honeyberries with perennial veggies as border plantings. Lemons, Lemonade, that sort of thing. You wouldn't believe how much dirt I re-arranged in that garden...or how many times I turned the beds over with a shovel, mixing in amendments and such. A young man using cash money could've done it all (with the same tools) in a matter of two or three weeks. It took me almost a year and a half. I ain't a young man. My point being, that anyone -if they really wanted to, or needed to do so- can install a design like that, if they can plan ahead and measure things a bit. (Edit: Now that I think about it, it took me the best part of two years to get to this point, which is a bit more than a year and a half...) This post was edited by wbonesteel on Sat, Jun 8, 13 at 0:24

I think you have transformed that area and the path is a good use for that shady area. Paths are very practical and I tend to not have room and let plants encroach on mine. When plants reseed in paths I let them stay and when they flop over the path I let them block it. What is the material in your path? How deep is it? The good thing about shade is that Bermuda can't thrive in it. Shade gardens are easier to tend in the summer and less likely to be taken over by the worst weeds. Now that it is sale time, I would be checking for shade plants at Lowes because when Christmas trees come they mark things down and move them out.