VERY impressive Will !
.....really like your photos & work !

Regarding the gradual "lawn depletion" thing -- this has worked very well for me too : hardly any lawn left in the back yard (where it was 100% lawn when I bought the place), and only a couple of small patches left in the front yard.

Keep up the good work ! ....love it !!

In love with all the minis. Wanna bite some of them they're so darn cute.

Ok so you'll probably laugh but my teeny front and back also has lots of gorgeous blue stones and granite rocks. LOVE stones and I also had red brick as edging from the PO. But I removed all the red borders because I felt like it was too much contrast. Now I just have blue stone, natural stones etc. mostly neutral in color.

And I don't have any grass. Just walking paths with gravel and slate BUT I love the grass you have because you're beds are much larger than mine and have that rustic look so I like how the grass adds a "soft" scape into the landscape. You could add a walking trail and water feature without removing all of the grass. But that's just my feeling and I don't live there. And I do love what you've created so I'd probably like what ever you end up doing next.

Love the 1st photo with that big window. Sweet looking.

Very nice and neat garden you have Will!
I hope your neighbours have the acres you need when all your plants will become mature ;0)

Geez! Too many sardines/plants crammed in. Sorry for my opinion. Been watching your posts and seeing your place evolve for awhile now. You're a very hard worker! Think hard work now....just wait. You say you'll move/thin these plants later. Have you considered what you'll do with all the plants you move? 75% of your plants will have to go at some point....sooner than later. It's a shame.... such nice specimens and no room to grow! Could've saved half the money you've already spent on larger specimens and less headache later. Plants are so close together that transplanting/removing plants will GREATLY effect/disrupt the surrounding plants root systems. Hope you have a plan!!!!

Plan!

1. Continually assess for future cramming. The next couple years will still be very busy in this regard. This Spring for example, I sold, traded or moved over 300 specimens.

2. Allow those that mix well to 'grow into' eachother. As long as the plants are very slow growers, or only have minor 'collisions', I'll happily allow them to 'mesh' together i.e. nature. This will take a lot of thinking and planning, but considering how much effort I've put into the first two years of gardening, I feel more then up to the challenge.

3. Any VERY large specimens that can't stay will go to a local botanical garden, with whom I am partners with. I'll either be paid in cash or in trade(more plants!) with which I can sell or plant at friends, neighbors, etc.

The botanical garden is over 90 acres, so we have a lot of space to use and he's already asked me to plan for a future 'conifer walk', a 5-10 acre section full of mainly large dwarves and other larger conifers where visitors can walk a series of windy paths through these wonderful plants.

4. Some plants *will* have to be removed, outright to conifer heaven as Ken likes to say. The idea here is that I can keep whatever looks great and not worry when other plants don't.

5. Gifts. I've found that most of my plants are more then happy being transplanted, provided I dig a decent sized hole and then give them 3-6 months to establish. With the plants I've already moved to the rock garden at the botanical garden, we've literally had a 100% success rate of transplant - and that's over some 100-150 plants. Plenty of conifer lovers, friends, family, neighbors, etc. that would be happy to take my 'removed leftovers' and plop them into their yard.

My current total is somewhere between 1150 and 1250 different conifers - a total of about 1600-2000 once you account for duplicates. Eventually in 15-20 years, I expect I'll have 400-600 on my property and the rest will have been moved, died, given away, sold, traded, etc.

If you want to worry about me, picture me trying to water these gazillion plants as a full-time firefighter!!

Now that's the hard part!

And don't be sorry for your opinion. It's allowed(and has been repeated here), and I'm taking it all into consideration, even if you do have monkeybrains!

-Will

I'm giggling Will because I do remember you telling me you work with the local garden place so plants move back and forth.

I tend to agree that no matter how hard I try to take care of my garden, plants die and go to plant heaven. Very funny. And since I'm so unfamiliar with conifers, I'm thinking I could lose more than my 2 transplanted Spruces before the year is out BUT I hope not. I love my 3 new pines.

My little pinus strobus were recently UNDER WATERED! HA. Because I was so afraid to OVER WATER. (I'm sorry Ken IT IS MORE DIFFICULT than you think to a newbie.) that they have brown sections on top. merde!

hey buddy .....

i can only give you the rudimentary suggestions.. watering it TOTALLY UP TO YOU.... your soil.. your weather.. your planting ...

if you really think anyone can tell you how to do it.. you will learn fast ...

WILL!!!!!

wow .... you remind me of someone i used to be.. single.. too much money.. needed a hobby ... lol ...

keep up the good work ...

if you get a chance... out near the street.. where you had 100 of some scrub bushes .... is that being developed... i bet some of the pix address that area.. but i dont recognize it

ken

That was this Ken, about 20 'scrub bushes':

now it's the pics you see above:

All of the shrubs are gone, with the exception of some of the existing scotch heathers, doug-firs and dogwood(on the right). Put in about 120 conifers, 25 heathers and a few dozen perennial/ground cover types in here.

More to go, I'm going to rock garden down by the street next.

-Will