Another opinion

This week I got another opinion on the design. It was cheap - he literally just drew over the other design with his ideas. He had some good ideas and it was more or less what I was after. Here are his annotations:

Design 2

These are his comments from top left to bottom right (roughly):

1. In place of the Bottlebrush Buckeye, he suggested Burkwood Viburnum or a Burning Bush because he didn't think there'd be enough light.
2. Same for Japanese Anemone for which he suggested pink Astilbe instead (labeled "1").
3. He wasn't thrilled about the Dogwood tree, and instead suggested a Rosebud Tree.
4. He agree with heavily trimming up the existing viburnum.
5. He was unsure about the Blackeyed Susans (labeled "2") getting enough light. Instead he suggested Gayfeather.
6. Likewise with the Cransebill 'Rozanne' (labeled "3") in place of which he suggested Stella Daylily.
7. He agreed with getting rid of the existing spirea bush (replacing with endless summer hydrangea).
8. He suggested putting the hydrandea bushes around the corner and to not have the one out away from the house (he 'X'ed it out in the design). I agree.
9. In front of the hydrangeas (labeled "4"), he suggested planting white Astilbe (7). He said it would in with the pink Astilbe. I like it.
10. In front of those around the curve (labeled "5"), he suggested planting 8 hostas. I'm not sure I like this idea. And I'm also a little concerned with the area under the tree not having much winter interest.
11. He didn't like the idea of the Liatris 'Kobold' in front of the window (labeled "A", previously "4") and instead suggested planting 3 Blue Holly bushes (which actually was what was there before I ripped them up earlier this year).
12. In front of those (labeled "2/7"), he suggested either Stella D'ora Daylily or Sedum 'Autumn Joy'.
13. In front of those (labeled "6"), he suggested Myrtle Vinca ground-cover. I'm tot sure about this.
14. And finally, an alternative to the the barberry is a single bush of either Globe Blue Spruce or Euonymos along with "summer color" annuals (labled "B"). Euonymos is what is on the other side of the sidewalk so that would tie into those, so I'm leaning in that direction.

And that's it. I wish I could have had a completely fresh design instead of just modifying the existing one, but it was one of the ways that I was able to get it for cheaper - I got what I paid for, I suppose.

I still don't feel 100% confident in everything, but I do think it's closer to what I had in mind, so I think the rest is up to me. What I feel the most confident about is the Hydrangeas, so I think this weekend I'll get to work on removing the existing bush on the corner and plant some Hydrangeas (I still have the potted one that my mom gave me)!

Calum Memorial Garden is planted

The sun came out today for just a little bit and allowed the temperature to reach 72 degrees, so my wife and I got out and worked on the memorial garden for our son and planted the plants that we purchased yesterday.

I started out by digging up the phlox and transplanting it to the front yard. My options for where to put it were limited, but I snuck it in near the hydrangea tree:

Phlox transplanted to the front yard.

It will hopefully be more happy there. However, prior to moving it I noticed that the lower leaves of about half the plant had some dark speckles on the leaves.

Dark speckles on lower leaves of Phlox.

I thought that it might be the powdery mildew disease that Phlox are prone to getting and it might be, however, upon looking at photos of the disease online, it doesn't look very similar, being not white and all. In any case I pruned off every leaf that had it. The really interesting thing is that those speckles weren't present yesterday. I looked at a zoomed in photo taken yesterday and they don't appear to be there:

Photo of the same plant just yesterday with no speckles present.

I did a quick online search and found a forum post with pictures that look similar (yes, quite the scientific diagnosis). According to the responses it's leaf spot fungal disease / septoria divaricata fungus and is spread from the soil. This would make sense since we were digging up plants there and soil was flying everywhere and I know some landed on and near the phlox plant. We also had rain last night that could have splashed it up onto the leaves. I'll be keeping a close eye on the other plants we just put in in that area. I need to get some mulch ASAP to help prevent it from getting on the plant leaves. I can't believe how quickly that infected the plant. I hope it survives because I really like it, and of course all of the new plants that we just labored over.

Anyway, I also transplanted the other hosta that was behind the phlox to the north side of the house along with the other hosta I transplanted over there yesterday. Boy are there a lot of roots over there. I could barely find a spot to plant them (oh and I almost cut our cable line...). Here's a shot of what that area looks like now:

North side of the house with hosta transplants.

There'll be a stone pathway through there soon someday.

And after deciding how to arrange the plants (which was borderline random), my wife and I got to planting them and this is how it ended up:

Calum Memorial Garden

To finish it off we are going to get an engraved stone to put in it.

Here is the list of plants that we planted:

Wild Sweet William, Woodlan Phlox
'Blue Moon'
(Phlox divaricata)

Jacob's Ladder (Polemonium reptans)

Tiarella 'Jeepers Creepers'
Creeping Foam Flower

'Praying Hands' Hosta

Dwarf Goatsbeard
(Aruncus aethusifolius)

Bleeding Heart
(Dicentra spectabilis 'Alba')

Golden Bleeding Heart
(Dicentra spectabilis 'Gold Heart')

White-flowered Epimedium
(Epimedium x youngianum 'Niveum')

New Guinea Impatiens
(Impatiens hawkeri)

Who names these things?? Woodland Phlox - hey that sounds nice; Jacob's ladder - sure, I can buy that; but Jeepers Creepers? Dwarf Goatsbeard? Huh??

Anyway, in addition to the garden, my wife put together the pot of Begonias for the patio:

Pot of Begonias.

Brigitte & Nadine Rhine Begonia

They look lovely! My parents gave us a pot of yellow begonias as a house warming gift in 2007 and they bloom beautifully all summer long! That is why I bought them.

And finally to wrap this long post up, I planted another pretty hosta that we purchased next to some other hostas in the backyard:

It's the lighter colored green one in between the two large ones
toward the left center.

Hosta 'Orange Marmaloade'

Good luck, plants.

Unplanned plant purchases

Today we went to the Indianapolis Museum of Art gardens to enjoy the nice weather. And it was lovely. I walked around the gardens taking pictures of the names of various plants that were planted in areas that seemed to have similar lighting conditions to areas of our yard, mostly shaded to part sun. I'll save those for another post someday as they aren't too terribly exciting. But what is exciting is that we purchased some plants today! This was entirely unplanned. We ventured into the plant store that they have on the grounds and we couldn't resist purchasing some. Then since we needed some potting soil, we stopped at another gardening shop on the way home, and of course I couldn't help myself again and purchased even more. I don't have photos of all of the tags of the plants yet, but here's a photo of them:

New plants!

A total of 15 - better keep me away from plant stores or we'll go broke rather quickly.

I do, however, have plans for the majority of them. Most of them will end up in small garden that we are planting in memory of our son who died at birth in a miscarriage earlier this year. The spot we chose for this garden is next to the deck in the back yard. It's a shady location that gets an hour or two of direct sun a day, thus most of the plants we purchased are shade tolerant or partial sun. I like them. There's something about shade loving plants. They just seem more peaceful to me for some reason and I think for the purposes of this garden that is fitting as there was nothing more peaceful than looking into the eyes of our son. We named him Calum Saul - Calum meaning "resembling a dove" and Saul meaning "one who was prayed for". One of the plants I found is called "Praying Hands" Hosta and I just had to get it - the leaves of the plant are folded upward together and I guess someone thought that looks like praying hands - I don't know if I really see that, but I got it for the name anyway. We also got a couple of bleeding hearts - one that has red and white flowers and another that are all white.

Other than the plants for the memorial garden, I also got some annuals for our patio that I'll put in a pot (the yellow and orange flowers on the right in the photo). I don't remember what they're called.

So when we got home, the work began. The future Calum Memorial Garden is currently home to a large hosta and an intermingled mess of pachysandra and lily of the valley. He's a "before" photo:

Future Calum Memorial Garden location.

This is also the location where I planted the phlox last year. I'll be transplanting that very soon to a more sunny location.

We began by carefully digging up and separating the pachysandra and lily of the valley. And you heard me right - I said "we" - I am overjoyed to say that my wife decided to join me in this project! It was wonderful having her out there with me and I told her that she looks like a natural gardener. I'm hoping that this is the beginning of a shared love for gardening!

Once we had dug them all up, my wife began the task of transplanting some of the pachysandra to a couple other areas of it in our yard that were sparse. We're hoping that it survives and eventually fills in those areas. We still have quite a bit of it left and of course there's also the pile of lily of the valley plants. I'm not sure if we'll try to transplant those somewhere else or not. We obviously didn't get to it today, so we may lose our opportunity anyway.

While she was planting the pachysandra, I dug up the hosta and moved it to the north side of the house. I ended up splitting it in two and replanting it in two spots there. I have plans to create a walkway through  for that area connecting the front and back yard. My idea is to fill the area with shade loving plants (the area is full shade) and there are already a number of hostas planted there. We'll see if the new hostas are able to get re-established there. The soil is very compacted and contains a good amount of clay and roots from nearby trees. It was difficult to dig the holes.

So after a good day's work, the Calum Memorial Garden is almost ready for planting. The only things left are to transplant phlox and possibly the other hosta (in the upper right of the photo). I noticed that I forgot to purchase some forget-me-nots (the irony...), so I need to remember to plan a spot for those in the garden once we get to planting it; if the weather isn't too rainy, we should be able to do that tomorrow!