good impermeable gloves [i use heavy leather] .. long sleeves.. long pants .. end of day ... if a young plant.. pull it out .. put in plastic bag.. and put at curb ... go in house.. gingerly take off clothes.. and wash separately in hot water ... if very old.. and you cant pull it out ... cut at ground level ... use very expensive applicator at link.. to apply full strength round up or stump killer or ivy killer ... if you see it again.. cut and drip ... it once took me three years.. ivy not only vines up.. it ... when very old.. vines underground .... and come to find out.. i was trying to kill a 2 inch root vine ... and when i would cut a sprout.. 3 to 6 inches back... in a few months.. up would pop another ... as i said.. it took 3 years to finally dissuade this monster to die ... as noted.. repeatedly.. PI in your lungs is not pretty ... no burning ken Here is a link that might be useful: link

Just some thoughts on your plant choices... Loropetalum and Lavandula stoechas are at opposite ends of the water requirement spectrum, and Loropetalum wants to get 5 feet tall by across or more at maturity, you'll be pruning this a lot and losing the natural form to keep it in check. I never use Loropetalum chinense rubrum selections unless they have at least 6 feet of space to grow. Purple Fountain Grass is really more of a warm season annual than a reliable year round good appearance perennial in SF Bay Area conditions, and I only use it in my designs as an annual to be yanked when it starts looking bad by late December/early January. It seems to take forever to look good after winter is over, while it arrives early in the season from southern California greenhouses each spring, it may be mid June before one in the ground looks full again. I'd suggest sticking with plants that are more water compatible if it is all on the same valve. My personal bias would be to lose the Pennisetum rubrum and substitute with more of the Lavender or maybe some Tulbaghia violaceae 'Silver Lace' for a similar grassy foliage look and long bloom season/deer resistance. Adding something like a spilling Erigeron x moerheimerii would also relate to the Lavender. If you like purple foliage, I might suggest seeking out Eucomis comosa 'Sparkling Burgundy' as an accent,(but this isn't a Home Depot type of plant), or maybe Sea Lavender/Limonium perezii for the long spring to fall deep purple blooms and low water needs. If you wouldn't mind adding some magenta/fuchsia flower color to the mix, Salvia chiapensis is another one that spills and drapes and has a nearly year round bloom period, or the newer hybrid Salvia 'Wendy's Wish' is quite nice as well. Some bulbs such as Scilla peruviana could also be an interesting addition to the mix, with bold color in March/April, and survives on rainfall alone.

Hi! I finally settled on: some knockout roses, pink pentas, caladiums, mexican petunias, a little purple queen, a little yellow lantana, some pineapples, a firebush (which doesn't seem happy in the full sun spot I chose....), a meyer lemon tree, and some pink crown of thorns. I think I need a couple of other clumps of color or something to balance... theres a spot that needs some white or orange. For white I've thought of maybe vinca (?) but I thought maybe someone else might have a better suggestion... and I am not so fond of them but I know they are drought tolerant and perennial. I think I could also use something with a little height in addition, not necessarily a white or orange flower. The photos don't really do it justice, and it had been so dry I was holding off a little on spending more on plants to fill in, but now that the rain has started I'm ready. And now what I've planted will fill in too, although I am wishing it would hurry up a bit! :-) thanks for any suggestions! Here is a link that might be useful: june gallery

Carole - I'm not totally sure whether you mean a front walk that goes relatively straight out to the street or one that turns and runs parallel to the front of the house to a side driveway or something else, so I'll share information on several situations. Also, you might want to do a search on 'walk' on the LD forum. I've linked a series of 3 posts that includes a before and after of a project to make the approach to the front of a house more user friendly and asthetically pleasing. (The top of my list is the first post and the link at the end is the final result.) It considers things like why have a curve and what is an appropriate width for a walkway. It also has a few mockups, one with a way to plant the walkway. Mostly they just have grass against the walk. http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/design/msg0610211618164.html http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/design/msg0609164317707.html In both my own houses, I have always planted everything between the house and the driveway (which goes in an arc past the front of the house) as a garden. I currently have a walkway about 9 feet long, and the grass is on the other side of the driveway. So I have two garden beds, one edged by two sides of the building (which has a right angled ell), the drive, and the walkway, and the other bed edged by the walkway, one building wall, the drive, and the garage entrance. They are big enough for shrubs as well as smaller plants, but not trees. I've found them relatively easy to maintain and I like the way they complement the building. I hadn't realized it before, but my previous house had a very similar arrangement. At the school where I work there is a walkway from the front door straight out to the street, and when we tried planting along the walkway (about 25 feet long) it just wasn't a reasonable maintainance job for a public space and by the end of the year, both the person who maintains the lawns and I agreed to just mow it down and let it go back to grass. maybe we hadn't thought out the look and the issues of mowing and foot traffic well enough beforehand, but it never really looked like a garden. (More traditional gardens along the building that are a mix of shrubs, bulbs, annuals, and perennials do just fine and have done well for at least 15 years.) I would think that unless that type of plantings along the side of a walkway are really wide beds that connect with beds along the building or along the front of the property that they might look out of place or simply be in the way and hard to maintain. I'm not sure if I've given you much help . . . Here is a link that might be useful: front walkway project