This part of the hosta bed still has to filled with ajuga. I am slowly working on it, I propagate ajuga myself.

Your new garden looks absolutely beautiful and it is only going to look better as time goes on.You have such
large starter plants. Were they from some other area in your yard before? They look so healthy and with your preparation for planting will make it well worth it. Will love to see pictures as it grows. Thanks for sharing

Thank you, almosthooked! No, I bought all hosta planted in this bed back in May of this year. I learned from the forum topics that purchasing mature divisions or clumps will save me a year or two on waiting. If I am not mistaken, it was ken who posted "I do not have patience for green bananas". I share his point of view (and luck of patience :LOL):)) Only few that I bought (absolutely could not resist the beauty)are 2-3 eyes plants.It is not a promotion, but Venero gardens has decent collection of mature divisions (I was interested in giants), my Blue Mammoth is one of the choices their. I just bought 5 more from them for another hosta bed : Flower Power, Colossal, 4 eyes Montana Auereomarginata (I hope spelling is close enough), Tenruy, and Olive Bailey Langdon.

You've done a lovely job on this project. Lots of work, but quite obviously well worth it.
Cher

Interesting that you have a lot of Ajuga(Bugleweed). I have some,not in my garden,but it was here before I moved here. I tried some of the more hybrid types,but they just died. The common variety grows best for me. Nice garden,and you will be surprised next year,when they come back up,how much different it will look. When you start out with large clumps,they will be huge in no time. Good job! Phil

Thanks for sharing your garden pics. You have worked hard this summer and it looks great. Nice hosta. Good use of the pole you couldn't move. Looks like you placed it there on purpose!

You are going to get a lot of pleasure from sitting on that bench and admiring all your hard work. Great project - thanks for sharing.
Jan

Absolutely a work of art.You deserve to take a break and sit on your bench and watch them grow.

I also like ajuga, and was very pleased when I discovered that it can stay green under the snow. It stuck up its blue spikes of flowers through our vinca, and added a beautiful note of color to all that green with lavender single flowers.
You might not like them, but I like the white violets, they seem to spring up wild in the grass up in Massachusetts. More ground cover, is the way I look at it!

This area will be a show spot come next spring.

Elly, what is your garden zone? I have an idea for your chainlink fence, but your zone could affect what I recommend.

Thank you all, folks!

Phil, I have Burgundy Glow ajuga planted in this bed (it looks so purple in the pictures, which is not true), it seems to be somewhat delicate plant. I also bought some Bronze Beauty - this one concerns me a little. Plants arrived very tiny and a little weak, and one month later they were sending out runners. It seems to be much more aggressive robust grower.

Ella,

Thanks for sharing your lovely new garden. I use the common ajuga between my hosta plantings too. I find them great for weed control and not invasive if you keep at them.

I like how you worked the pole into the over all plan. Id plant some varigated ivy at the base and train it to cover the pole.

Beautiful job there, Ella. Love the green pole; it's what I call a 'happy-stance'.

Thank you all!

Mocassinlanding, I will be very happy, if you can suggest something...this chain link fence is an eyesore, and I really don't know how to dress it up, and to cover this ugly but must have plastic screen!

P.S. Mocassinlanding, I am in the zone 7, I believe, in MD

I thought maybe the area outside the fence was lower and you were keeping the good soil from washing down on somebody's parking area. If not that, then a plant screening could work, right?

Now, I am a big believer in jasmine. Check out trachelospermum jasminoides. Another name for STAR JASMINE or CONFEDERATE JASMINE...depends on where you live.

It blooms in May and June, white starry shaped fragrant blooms. I had ONE PLANT on a 8 foot tall 4x4 in my front yard, and it is now about 6 foot in diameter and trying to grow higher than the post. I also saw it used in Tuscany and Umbria to cover chain link fencing, arbors, growing in pots, and it was magnificent. In my zone it is evergreen. Do not know YOUR ZONE. But in Tuscany it is a lot cooler than it is here, and they have it everywhere. I'll show some photos if I can keep myself from watching the Weather Channel and hurricane updates. It is distracting.

I also have a 7 foot tall chain link privacy fence that is 100 feet long. I planted 40 of these along this fence in 2010. I know from experience it will take about 2 years to get going, and then stand back!! It is in places already filling in, hiding some of the fence.

Let's see if I have a shot of the way they grew it at the villa in Orvieto Italy. The gardener kept it perfectly trimmed like a hedge, and I had to look to find the fence within it. And the pergola at the swimming pool was in total shade because was covered with the star jasmine.

Note the pergola at the far end of the pool. Then the rounded off hedge around the pool, that is shaped with the fence supporting the vining plants.

Wow, I love it! Thank you, mocassinlanding! I am giving it a serious thought. I am in zone 7, MD, it should be OK. Will it grow in the shade and bloom?

My 100 foot of 7' tall chain link is under mostly pecan trees, and it is growing like crazy. I know it will grow, and I think it will bloom nicely as well, because my 40 plants are blooming already in May and June. It is a good vine to allow other vines to grow with it. Something like clematis would blend in, and I also have one arbor where I planted a jasmine on each side with a Zepherine Drouhan (thornless rose) and the two species are getting along fine.

One thing I like about it, when it makes a shoot you can cut it off and root it to expand along your fence. Another good thing, it does not grow like ivy by putting rootlets into wood or mortar, so is not destructive. It does not have tendrils which wrap around wire, or thorns, it just keeps branching off, thus makes "elbows" that can help it go vertical. It might could be a ground cover, but it is super effective with its massive dark green evergreen leaves and white star blooms. Even during our two weeks below freezing, it had some bronzing of portions of the leaves, but none ever turned yellow or died back. A strong plant. I would mulch it at the base though. Protect the roots and watch it when it is young. Planted in the spring, it should be hardened off for its first winter in the real world.

Here is another way it can look exciting: I love this picture. Actually, I edited this with Virtual Painter because it was so beautiful.

Mocassinlanding, I did some research yesterday, and I came across Madison Confederate Jasmine, it suppose to be a little hardier than traditional CJ. I will definitely try it.In fact, I was going to purchase one now but I will follow your suggestion, and plant one next spring. I wanted to plant some vine by the chain link fence, but everything vine that I researched seemed to be invasive. Invasive plants scare me:)).

I've come to appreciate your concern myself. However, this jasmine even the big single plant on the post in my front yard, it twines a bit, wraps around itself, blooms, and such as that, but it is not coming up by roots or seeds, although when it is happy after a while it creates a pair of seed pods which are long as vanilla bean pods, yet no volunteer plants.

I was not aware of the Madison Confed Jasmine, so you have done some good research. Fantastic. I'm sure you will be very happy with your choice. As you can see from the Italian plant in the last photo above, it can get extensive in a big container, or a small planting hole surrounded by pavement, and it can take being pruned or sheared to make a more formal looking smooth hedge....which BLOOMS PROLIFICALLY. I'll have to look into Madison CF myself, as potential gifts to family living further north.

Very nice mature hosta plants, that's the way to start!
But Ajuga will be invasive and will take over the bed the first year, per my experience. Consider that slugs could hide under Ajuga leaves.

great job.. thanks for sharing the result with us

the soil under that picea abies is going to be very hard. ... to keep moist AT DEPTH ... water enough to insure the soil is damp down 3 to 6 inches ...

it will be to your advantage .. to water DEEPLY.. rather than to do the surface spray every day ...

you water for an hour.. then go dig a small hole with a hand trowel .. and find out if the water gets to depth.. water another hour ...and keep doing new holes.. until you find out how many hours you have to run the sprinkler.. to get it down there .. and once you do.. you water often enough to maintain that water at depth ...

and no one can tell you how to do it.. in your garden soil.. in your garden..

thx

ken

mocassinlanding, yes, CJ's great advantage is that is not invasive. And it's evergreen! I am so exited! Thank you again for your advice!

berndnyz, the original plan was to cover the bed completely with ajuga, and to grow hostas as specimens with a lot of room between them. I am not sure if I will achieve this goal or not because ajuga is a little slow and delicate grower for me...but just in case it will change it's mind I put up plastic against the fence to protect my neighbors' yard from invasion of my ajuga (and mine from

invasion of their ivy and weed vines:lol), and I separated lawn and the bed with plastic border.
I have some plain and very old 20-30 hostas on the front lawn bed, and surprisingly they have not been bothered by slugs yet. In fact, I tried to set few shallow plastic containers filled with beer just as a test - are there any slugs or not?... but it did not work. No slugs were caught but my dogs helped themselves on beer. I canceled a promotion of their bad habit, and just been watching hostas. So far so good, no slug damage. If they will come...well, I will have to find another solution.

ken, I amended the whole bed with about 30 large bags of nearly rotten grass, and a LOT of straw, and paper, and 6 cubic yards of Leaf Gro compost...it still will get rock hard?...I see a lot of earth worms working though the soil there...I somewhat rely on them to keep soil nice and fluffy...I try not to walk on the bed, and fenced it to keep my dogs out. I water it gently but deeply once a week, and water penetrates really good (for now). And I do not remove anything that falls on it and will decay...What else could be done to keep the soil in good shape?

ella - what a lovely space you created! To help keep the soil in good shape you'll need to add organic matter yearly. Compost spread as mulch in late fall topped with irregular wood chips has worked well for our beds. I reach into the beds in spring using whatever tool is handy to be sure the mulch is pulled back from the plants, but don't dare step into the beds because the soil is just too soft & wet. Slug control is 3 pronged - sluggo type bait, hunt & remove when soil is moist, & also spray with ammonia water... Repeat. Repeat. Especially vigilant late summer to get all the adults possible and in early spring spray often with the ammonia water to get in & around emerging hostas to prevent damage.

You're right that Burgundy Glow ajuga spreads less vigorously than Bronze Beauty, but in my 9 month wet climate still spreads fairly well.

--3 Burg. Glow bareroot starts from a plant swap this April -- poor soil mulched with coarse wood chips around stepping stones across a low area in part shade became 30+ by now in August spreading out 3 feet square!

--spring planted Bronze Beauty 12" apart on center by the next spring was solid around stepping stones, hose reel, etc. That patch is easily 4 feet x 6 feet up & over each other so that not all even rooted just runners spread. Easy care for that area when stepped upon & an easy source of countless starts for other gardens. In another area about 10 runners removed & planted became 3 feet x 6 feet in a year's time growing over pathway rocks toward stepping stones in the middle of the path.

If you keep an eye on it & remove the excess runners your hosta will be safe. Otherwise the ajuga will over run & shoot runners between stems & even into the crown. Since the biggest growth spurt is in late spring I just snip the runners in early summer before they root. I am running out of new garden space and friends who don't have their own ajuga patch.

Ella,

Yor documentation via pics is very helpful and welcome here.

I look forward to seeing the future of your hard work.

Please keep up the hard work of documenting yor layout!

hh