Plants are in their spots - any suggestions?? (quickly :)

lily225

I'm taking a lunch break right now but have all my plants laid out in the spots that I had assigned. I made a graph chart yesterday according height and eventual spread of the plants, so this should work once everything is full grown.I think I also tried to spread them out according to bloom season. I think...

I just wnated to see if anyone had any suggestions before I started digging. ??? I basically have the shrubs in the back followed by the tallest plants and then the medium and shortest kind of nestled in there as well. I have lavender, daisey's and ???? right by the sidewalk and it will be the same on the other side of the sidewalk as well. The mini burning bush that is in that corner will be replaced by a tall growing boxwood and one will be on the other side as well, so as you come up the walkway things should be the same on both sides. Does that make sense?

Here are some pics... 

 

 

~NB~

Are you doing something to stabilize the slope? If I were doing this project for you, this area wouldn't be anywhere near ready for plants yet. I would build my wall and prep the bed. After all the tough digging and building was finished, THEN I would buy plants.

amz05

are you putting in any type of border to hold the grass back? It also looks like the beds need to be raised some before plants go in them. its too flat looking

FoxinFiji

~NB~:

Are you doing something to stabilize the slope? If I were doing this project for you, this area wouldn't be anywhere near ready for plants yet. I would build my wall and prep the bed. After all the tough digging and building was finished, THEN I would buy plants.

Yes you didn't prep the beds at all.  Heck you didn't even finish making the bed part of it is still grass.  It's not the end of the world but it's not the best way to start a flowerbed.  It's much easier to amend the soil before you plant anything in the beds.  Did you get a soil test done?  I'd start looking for some cheap or free compost from your city/town to mix in. 

lily225

Sorry, I left out some of the major pieces of information apparently.   The reason I had plants set out with the grass still there was to make sure I was cutting into the right shape/size border. I wanted to make sure my spacing was right and wanted to make sure it looked good before digging.

I did get rid of the grass within the white rope and I did rake in a few bags of gardening soil before planting anything. We also knew there was the slope issue - before we took this bed apart last year there had been a "wall" up with some of those long, flat bricks and we knew that worked from living with it for almost 2 years first. We had just taken them out for the time being. So the "wall" went back in as well as some more support for down by the sidewalk.

I realize we do not have the perfect yard (believe me, I reeeally know) and in a perfect world I would be able to make everything "right" before going at this bed. But the truth is that my husband is a pastor, we live in the church parsonage, our income doesn't allow for huge expenses like filling everything in with dirt nor does our church give us an allowance to do so. Also, we don't own this house, so while we do want to make it look nice, we have to draw the line somewhere since we will get no return on any work we do here once/if we ever leave. This house hadn't been lived in for over 10 years, so everything, inside and outside, had been let go. So we are doing what we can and know that it is a HUGE improvement from what we started with. Sorry for the rant, I just wanted to clarify why we weren't going "all out" with doing this bed 110% perfect.

 I did get all my planting done minus one shrub. The burning bush needs to be moved and then we can put the last shrub in. That will have to wait a day or two though becuase as I speak we entered another raining period that is supposed to last another 2 days. Grrrr.... 

But the bed looks great so far. I need to touch some things up around the edge and we still need to get mulch and do that, but it's a huge improvement from yesterday/2 weeks ago/1 year ago/2 years ago

CollegeGrrl219

The plants you chose are pretty hardy. Just do it. You'll be fine.

~NB~

lily225:

I had plants set out with the grass still there was to make sure I was cutting into the right shape/size border. I wanted to make sure my spacing was right and wanted to make sure it looked good before digging.

This is design layout work. This part is done on paper.

I realize we do not have the perfect yard and in a perfect world I would be able to make everything "right" before going at this bed. But I just wanted to clarify why we weren't going "all out" with doing this bed 110% perfect.

I understand what you're saying, I just don't want all of your hard work and your investment to wash down the driveway the first time it rains. If that part isn't done first ("100%"), you stand to lose all the money that you put into this. The plants and the soil are the less important part of the solution, and if I had to save money, I'd save it on the plants and the soil, and not on the construction. 

Good luck. We're not trying to add to the frustration you've already had with this project, we want to help you make it work.

onceuponadisaster

~NB~:

This is design layout work. This part is done on paper.

 

I'm just going to throw this out here as a lurker coming out of the closet: some of us just can't work on paper. My spacial reasoning skills suck, and trying to map things out on paper never works out for me. I need to be able to physically manipulate things in 3D (and preferably physically) to be able to envision things. 

lily225

~NB~:

lily225:

I had plants set out with the grass still there was to make sure I was cutting into the right shape/size border. I wanted to make sure my spacing was right and wanted to make sure it looked good before digging.

This is design layout work. This part is done on paper.

I realize we do not have the perfect yard and in a perfect world I would be able to make everything "right" before going at this bed. But I just wanted to clarify why we weren't going "all out" with doing this bed 110% perfect.

I understand what you're saying, I just don't want all of your hard work and your investment to wash down the driveway the first time it rains. If that part isn't done first ("100%"), you stand to lose all the money that you put into this. The plants and the soil are the less important part of the solution, and if I had to save money, I'd save it on the plants and the soil, and not on the construction. 

Good luck. We're not trying to add to the frustration you've already had with this project, we want to help you make it work.

 

Thank you for your concern - I realy do appreciate it since I am still learning. I think it was just a matter of me leaving information out of the original post -  ooops! But I do know where your concern is coming from. We had a lot of rain in the last couple weeks and with that brick retainer gone, a lot of our soil washed out including right around a daisy plant that was there. Not fun to watch. So we knew we had to get those back in ASAP.

Also, I did do my plan on paper first. I made graph paper and scaled everything down. I made little colored cut outs on paper to represent the plants/flowers and played around with it. I just wanted to test it out first outside before I dug and couldn't go back, you know?  And my original post was to see if I had overlooked anything with the layout of things.

Thanks for all the help!! I did get it all done yesterday, minus getting the burning bush moved and the other shrub in it's place. We also need to mulch still so that will make it look even better than it does right now  So excited to watch everything grow! It will help me learn to have more patience right??

pdxmouse

Speaking of patience -- don't over-fertilize. It's tempting to try and see if you can get faster growth, but what the plants put out will be weaker. I made this mistake as a rookie.