Groundcover and Summer Blooms

As part of our long term plan for the back yard, we’re aiming to have low groundcover along the full perimeter of the yard, pretty much anywhere that isn’t grass. Right now we have mulch under the hydrangea hedge and dogwood tree we put in last year, and the arbor vitae hedge we put in a few years ago:

Eventually, we’d like to have no mulch whatsoever — it would be nice to have a more natural, low maintenance look that surrounds the yard on all sides, and fills in spots that are harder to grow larger plants in (like right under the tree in the back right corner). The right kind of groundcover can spread relatively quickly, but it still takes time so I wanted to be sure to get some of it going this year. We’re not able to spend a ton of money this year, so we figure that if we start with a handful of plants and are patient we can propagate it over time.

As usual I turned to my landscape architect friend because I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to plants. She accompanied me to the nursery to help me pick out a few plants. We decided that Sweet Woodruff would work well in the shadier area under the tree and towards the arbor vitae hedge, so I picked up one to get started and planted it near our compost bin. On its own it’s obviously underwhelming, but we’re talking about the long game here….

Also if you’re thinking it looks like it’s been partially dug up, you’d be right: we’re having some sort of creature mess with our smaller flowers and plants — any idea what might be doing that and happen to stop them? It’s pretty darn annoying!

And then for along the sunnier side of the yard around the hydrangea hedge, we picked a 12-pack of vinca minor (aka periwinkle aka myrtle). My friend told me that if I wanted full coverage within a year should plant them every 12 inches, but that if I planted much fewer they’d still grow quickly and within a few years we’d be in good shape. I planted all 12 along the hedge, and I’m excited to see them grow! They’ll have purple flowers, which I think will be a nice complement to the white flowers that the hedge will have.

As for how the rest of the plantings we did last year are coming in, you can see in the above photo that the oak leaf hydrangeas survived the winter. And then looking down the full stretch towards the shed, you can see that the clumbing hydrangea has grown and the dogwood tree is alive and well:

The climbing hydrangea is even producing some white blooms:

And blossoms seem to be forming on the dogwood too:

It was a late start for them I think because we just planted them last fall, so I was thrilled to see this promising progress in the last week.

Also the plants we put in the planter a few weeks ago are starting to develop. Here you can see the pepper plant has some actual peppers forming, and in the back are the sprouts from the morning glory seeds.

As usual I’m fixated on how imperfect everything is and how I have no idea what I’m doing, but I have to remember that landscaping is about patience over the long term and I’m probably not making things worse so I just need to stick with it.