Well, I've been lurking.....I mean learning.....on this forum for the past couple years and it almost seems like I know most of you personally! We bought our house almost 10 years ago and then the little house next door a little over 3 years ago (it had become a rental with questionable residents and 2 pit bulls, enough said!) I've gone from literally killing any living plant that I looked at to a simple row of shrubs in front of the front porch to a somewhat landscaped front and back yard/yards. And now to the point that our community actually asked us to be on this year's garden tour......yikes, we are now in panic mode especially since we didn't start landscaping our back yard until last year!

Anyways, to the point of my post.....besides saying hi.....is that I've been wanting to start a "garden diary" for myself to track what we have done, encountered, failed as we try to figure out what in the heck we are doing. I thought that using this forum might be a really fun way of doing that and at the same time being able for you all to critize, critique and probably just get a good laugh while shaking your heads at us!

So if you all are interested......I tend to get wordy and take lots of photos...... :)

If not, just simply tell me to shut up..... :)

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The photo above is 3 years ago......vincas along the sidewalk, daylillies and sweetpotato vine in the planters growing down into the deep burgundy coleus, the 2 Japanese Maples surrounded by dwarf yaupon hollies, dianthus, gerbera daisies and the little azalea that just keeps hanging on for dear life!

Life was beautiful, peaceful, happy.......then "they" moved into the house next door! "They" (not to be judgemental) were an unmarried couple with at least 5 children between them. "They" had moved from their modest trailer home from a town not so far away, to realize their own sub-prime mortgage dream......right next door to us! "They" never made a single mortgage payment, but always found a way to meet their undying need for more tatoos......Long story short, we avoided the front yard at all costs and it paid the price for the last couple of years including the invasion of weeds from next door......

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Jumping ahead to today......"their" sub-prime dream turned into a nightmare......and we get to enjoy our front yard again! So this year, it's getting a major overhaul.....everything has grown so much that we have expanded the beds quite a bit. So we face the west and get that hot hot hot afternoon sun, we are starting to get a little relief as the 2 aristocrat pears in front of the house are finally starting to look like adult trees rather than twiggy teenagers. The dwarf yaupon hollies have done fantastic even with having been dug up and moved 2-3 times each over the last 8 years. The Japanese Maples are awesome and so easy......the azalea that just won't give up is still hanging in there......no bigger than 3 years ago, but it was a solid mass of pink this spring, but we are very guilty of being somewhat lazy gardeners. This is the third year for the President clemantis (to the left of the barberry) and it's getting ready to bloom.....it's the only clemantis that I'm truly having any luck with....could be that lazy gardener thing. The weeping cherry is new this year, so we'll see how it holds up (fingers crossed, everyone has told me that they thrive in the hot sun).

The rest of the bed, we've got a mix of perennials and then filling in for color with some vincas. Of course, I had to go with things that I've never grown before, but I did read all the labels and planned out my area somewhat before heading to the nursery. Here's what we are trying in front of the Japanese Maple by the steps: Tanacetum vulgare "Isla Gold" between the 2 yaupons to add some textural interest and nice color contrast with the light green; in front of that we put 3 Helena's Blush (Euphorbia amygdaloides hybrid) for texture and then the touches of pink I thought would play well with the maples; closer to the first yaupon (because I couldn't resist this plant, felt just like a puppy's ear) is Stachys "Helene von Stein"; filling in in front of the middle yaupon and going back towards the azalea, we put 3 "Old Court" Shasta Daisies.....DH couldn't resist this one because of the crazy petals; I also mised in closer to the steps a single 4" pot of Black Mondo Grass and then finally (not shown) in 2 planters near the street we're trying Achillea "Apricot Delight"

The side-walks though have me scared.....we've always just planted vincas, but over the last couple years, the vincas were just flat out dying off, and then the same thing happened last year with begonias.......then I read that vincas really deplete the soil. So this year we double the width of those beds, dug out 4" deep the old soil, added 2" of cottonseed compost and then.....

Okay, I've had my Stella De Oro daylillies (2 original plants) for about 5 years now, I've divided them a couple times and as a result at the beginning of this spring had 5 huge huge clumps with my mother and my sister-in-law having 2 others. I panic each and every time that I divide them because they look so sick and horrible, but then eventually perk up and take off. The main plants are bouncing back much better than my smaller divisions that I've lined the sidewalk with, so I'm not worried about them. The smaller divisions that I took (about 2-3 fans each) aren't looking so good, some are starting to show small signs of life, but others are just laying there.....

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Well here we were a year ago on the back after combining the yards from the 2 houses. The pool went in in July of the year before so there was no landscaping at all until last year. We started with a couple of the atlas blue spruces that my mom gave us for Christmas, some barberries, a leland cyprus, a couple purple leaf sand cherries (not sure how I feel about those yet), 4 varieties of daylillies, some boxwoods, a purple wysteria, a couple grape vines (for the trellis around the fountain); zebra grass from my mother and then lined that entire back bed with monkey grass (don't gasp) which also came from my mother, but originally came from my great-grandmother years and years ago. The basketball court is lined with dwarf yaupon hollies and then crape myrtles. We then just filled in the beds with petunias and coleus (I think I've finally decided that I'm not wild about the coleus.)

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We also put in the beds and walkways in the space between the 2 houses. Recycled a couple yaupon hollies which have traveled from the front of the house to the original backyard and no here, added pink crabapples and a weeping mulberry, a few emeral gaiety euonymus, a couple silverado sages, a hydrangea I've had for about 4 years that I still can't figure out, a few bird's nest spruce, lavendar, New Zealand flax and then just filled in with geraniums, begonias, vincas, coleus (yup just don't care for 'em) and then some dragon wind begonias in the shadier back corner....

Learned a few things after those beds and last year:

1. Even if you spend $17.99 on a plant, does not mean that is nothing more than a glorified annual.....New Zealand Flax.......it also does not like excessive rain fall in June....it rots and dies......plants $36, knowledge, priceless.

2. Even though El Reno is surrounded by zone 7s.....we are in a valley and are a zone 6!!!!!

3. Silverado Sage's don't like a zone 6 winter......they are beautiful and grow very very quickly.....but then again for me another expensive annual.

4. Baby lavendar is cute and fuzzy but then grows up.....tried to come back this year, but it is gone.

5. Bermuda is even more evil than I thought before, but Ornamec is my friend, although it is not a friend of bird's nest spruce.....labels are a good thing to read and then to actually believe what they say......Ornamec is not good directly sprayed on most varieties of spruce.

6. I don't think I'm ever going to have a beautiful blooming hydrangea :(

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And fianlly, here we are as of a couple days ago. We've still got a lot of work to do but we've got 8 weekends until this garden tour. So far this year our list of experiments consist of the following: dwarf sedum; sedum rupestre "angelina"; shasta daisies "snow lady" and "snowcap"; Black-Eyed Susan; Gaillardia "Arizona Sun"; coneflowers "Big Sky Sundown", "Big Sky Sunrise" and "Magnus"; penstemom "Lilliput Rose"; Rumex; Polemonium "Brise d'Anjou"; and osteospermum.

Already learned this year:

1. Even though the tag says in big letters on the front "PERENNIAL" that doesn't mean that there aren't little letters at the back and bottom of the tag that read "Not hardy; grow as an annual."......osteospermum, beautiful, but a bit pricey for being just an annual.

We also have another section of the yard which has 6 grapevines and several potted citrus along with this year trying all of our peppers, tomatoes and herbs in pots. And finally we're filling out the bed under the fountain with 3 varieties of mint: apple, peppermint and ginger.

So if I haven't been totally annoying and you all don't mind, I would love to share our experiment and hopefully get some great tips, pointers and inspiration from the rest of you!

Alex