A NEW GARDEN BEGINS TO GROW

The brief history of this garden, which sits right by the front door, is that it was a weedy patch of dirt with a few perennials in it when we bought the house. I resurrected it as an oval garden divided into three segments, separated by curvy paths. It was a design that didn’t work—I see that now—but for a brief time it wasn’t terrible. Until it was. It needed a complete revamp and last fall I ripped it up and started from scratch.

I’ve gone more formal with the design, although it has a bit of an odd twist to it. There are four outer quadrants and a center circle, each delineated with a chive “hedge”, and each outer quandrant is divided into three sections with a boxwood in the center.

Each segment is mass planted with one plant. In the segment closest, there is rhubarb on the right, roses on the left and petunias in the front. On the opposite side, which is shadier, are Bobo hydrangeas, Hakonechloa ‘All Gold’ and Impatiens.

The center is simply planted with alyssum, Thai basil and new clematis, which are just starting to climb.

‘HS Flame’ dahlia provides great dark foliage, bright blooms and stays low enough that I shouldn’t have to stake it.

I chose the plants with an aim to get lots of color spread throughout the garden, a ton of texture and a foliage element in each area. There is a combination of shrubs, perennials and annuals, so some plants will take a few years to really come into their own.

It’s still early days for everything and I hope the annuals will fill in their areas appropriately, although I did have to go back and plant some purple sweet potato vine between the Impatiens as that area was definitely looking too sparse.

Even as new plants, the Bobo hydrangeas are absolutely covered in flowers.

New gravel will be added soon.

Egyptian walking onions are sort of an oddity, but for now they offer great texture in the garden.

The final step in this project is to fill in the paths with a decorative gray gravel. Right now the paths are just a limestone road base that I laid down in fall. I didn’t want to put the gravel in until I was finished planting as the longer I can keep soil out of the gravel, the longer I’ll be weed free there.

I made a video about the process. Check it out here.