Lesson learned... the easy way

Yesterday I finally got started on planting the Boxwoods. After deciding about where I wanted them planted, I started digging. My intention was to plant them one by one. This would have been a mistake had I not started with the one that I did. When I started digging, I quickly found that the placement was right next to one of the in-ground sprinkler heads. This particular head is not in a good spot and needs to be moved about a foot or so closer to the grass (a project for another day, or for another person to do for me!), but I didn't want to plant it right next to it knowing that the area will have to be dug up in the future in order to move the head.

Sprinkler head in a bad place.

So, not sure what to do about that, I moved over to the next bush, started digging, then ran into a large root of the nearby tree. I thought to myself, "wow, this is going well."

A large root right where I wanted to plant.

I thought about going to get the ax, but thought that the tree may not like that so much, and started exploring other options such as planting it on either side, which required adjustments all of the other plants to maintain equal distance between them.

And this was the lesson I learned: dig all of the holes first before planting. Had I started at the other end, I probably would have planted 3 bushes before encountering this problem. Then I would have had to dig them up to fix the spacing. So, I'm very fortunate to have run into the problems when I did!

So because of the root I had two options (aside from using the ax): 1) plant it about 3 or 4 inches to the left and just in front of the root, or 2) plant it about a foot to the right. Adjusting the other plants accordingly in both cases.

I slept on it, and in the end I decided to plant it slightly to the left and just in front of the root. The Boxwood roots are just an inch two or so from the tree root, so hopefully this doesn't cause problems and the two plants can peacefully share the water and nutrients. The reason I went that way was purely aesthetics as I didn't like how it looked as much being so far to the right.

Tonight I finally planted them, digging all of the holes prior to planting. Doing this also allowed me to place each plant more precisely relative to the others. I planted them following the same instructions as I followed when planting the Holly bushes. Here is how they ended up looking:

Newly planted Boxwoods.

All together now.

Green Velvet Boxwood tag

I'm happy with it. It looks way better than how it looked with them sitting there unplanted in their pots. I think it'll be nice having some color there come winter.

Next up, I plan on planting some flowers in front of the Holly bushes. I still like the idea of having Sedum "Autumn Joy" there, so that's the plan.