Help choose Hydrangea with boxwood border!
kcsheppard
8 years ago
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kcsheppard
8 years agoRelated Discussions
New gardener, new border, help!
Comments (5)You are asking about "what to plant" but have you figured out where you should be planting? Looking at your picture I am curious about that gate and how it fits in with your house. Do many people use that gate? Is there a path to your front door? I am also wondering how your lawn looks during the summer. Are you struggling to grow grass in this area or it that just the time of year that the picture was taken? You have what looks like a cozy enclosed space. How do you like to use this area? In a lot of ways the question "what should I plant?" is about the same as "what should I where?" Are you going to the beach, a night club or to the office? When you go out do you like to wear jeans or a formal outfit? Without knowing you, your style or what you want your front yard to become it is hard to come up with recommendation on what you should plant. I would suggest hitting the library looking for books on shade gardening and borders. You could also jump over to Google and do an image search on phrases like "shade garden" and see if something jumps out at you. - Brent...See MoreFormal Boxwood Parterre Garden ...Need Help
Comments (13)I planted my boxwood hedge last summer (consisting of about 40 boxwoods)---goodness I can't imagine 300! I have to laugh at how much you sound like me though.... Ah, how we drive the husbands crazy eh? I have to ask, how are you pruning them at this point? Are you keeping the rounded shape? Mine are still round balls about a foot from touching, so I've been lightly pruning them, but haven't started boxing them in at all yet. I've read about the stake and string method, and to make sure not to go straight down, but rather have the top be a bit more narrow than the bottom. When is the right time to start that shape? I was waiting until they grew together, but the above comment about not having a dense shrub worried me. My neighbor's boxwoods are 5 years old and have not been pruned much (she likes them to be more natural) and I did notice the other day how open they are inside compared to mine that seem more tightly packed. I don't want to lose that! Sorry to tag along on your thread here, but I am also anxious to hear the advice you receive! :) Oh, and I would love to see pictures as well!~ To post a picture, go to photbucket.com and upload your picture. Once the photo is uploaded onto the site, click the picture, and then click and paste the HTML code onto the text here....See MoreNeed Help With Perennial Border
Comments (11)I would certainly encourage what people have said about deepening the border. If this is your main perennial or mixed border, it is very hard to get excited about and get experience with plants without a significantly deeper border. 6' is probably a minimum in my book, with give you barely enough space for three "rows" of plants (though generally we don't plant in rows...). If you have the courage to delve in, there is nothing wrong with making the border even deeper in some sections. Putting in a small stepping stone path can help with maintenance access where the border gets deep and give it some interest in the winter. A couple of well chosen shrub and clematis will give you a lot more height variation and seasonal interest. Choose from smaller viburnums, elders, mockoranges, roses -- any number of plants. And Clematis on obelisks will weave and knit over adjacent large perennials and shrubs. Others may disagree, but in a cold N temperate climate, I personally don't care for most dwarf conifers planted in a bed mainly devoted to perennials. They are very stiff and static looking. And to me they end up looking very lonely in the winter, don't add much. In a crowded overflowing border with no bare soil (my kind of planting), many conifers will not grow that well and may have too much needle damage from crowding by perennials. Personally, I think deciduous shrubs with multiple seasons of interest are better choices, tolerate crowding better, often grow faster, can be used as clematis scaffolding, and in my hands are just more satisfactory. You won't be able to get more than one or two but they will add a lot. Another thing to do will be to add big, shrubby perennials -- ornamental grasses, persicaria polymorpha, etc....See MoreNeed your help for a border
Comments (4)Good tips from everyone. I would start small, you can always expand. You can even save money by dividing your best growers, and repeating them along the boundary line. Bulky plantings are more effective, and hold their own against shrubs, which are invaluable for adding structure to a planting. I added a small berm, to define one corner of my yard. I outlined it with rocks, and added a few boulders to give it some dimension. I started with a Korean feather reed grass (hope it's not too sunny for it now that they removed their tree!), a small batch of Matrona sedum, and a couple of small deciduous shrubs, spiraea and barberry. If my gaura come back, I'll move them here, they spread quite a bit for me last year! I think an evergreen groundcover, maybe juniper, would look nice....See Morekcsheppard
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