Ooh it is nice!
I dunno what kind of shrub it is, sorry. (Hopefully once I get pics you can tell...?) As shrubs go, I like it. It has lots of smallish oval glossy leaves of a good green. It's an evergreen (in Ohio, anyway).
That last one sounds really promising, littlek! When does it bloom?
I do like the idea of another big hydrangea or two of another color. Let me ask you guys, how much water do hydrangeas usually need? This is the first time I've had hydrangeas and they're extremely thirsty. I think I've established that it's partly just that their root systems are not optimal due to overwatering/ surface watering by former owners (watering too often, too little). I think they are improving a bit as I try to water them less often, more deeply. But that's my current hesitation, as I'd prefer to have something that doesn't require so much more watering than what comes from the sky. (Most everything else in the front yard does fine with far less watering.)
If it's specific to these guys/ how they were treated in the past and not so much specific to hydrangeas in general, I'm happier about the idea of more hydrangeas.
I'm guessing your round shrubs are japanese holly, inkberry (another holly) or boxwood.
Boxwood smells a bit like cat pee.
dingdingding another winner for the quizzical doggie. It's boxwood, looks vaguely like this (ID'ed from other close-ups of branches tho):
It looked like boxwood to me, but hard to tell.
I dunno on water there, past rain, for hydranges. I give mine too little, and they live on and on. But it doesn't get very hot here. I'm just bad...
on Alyogyne huegelii, it's too wispy in structure, me thinks, for the role it would play there.
a Cornus kousa variety? mmmmmmm, nice.. how about two...
Soz: could I ask you to jot down your gardening objective in your profile ? Your enthusiasm is so uplifting; it's a treat to read your gardening posts.
Also, may I suggest you focus on the backyard first? It is there you can go trial an error to gain experience &confidence in your gardening abilitybefore tackling the street side of your house.
If you're successful with pulmonarias, then stick in some gentians:
Are those your gentians? Quite lovely, Neko!
Looking further at Kousas and cornus in general I find I'm not as smitten with Wolf Eyes. It's white margin is wavy, which is cool, but may lead the viewer to perceive the leaf as wilted.
Soz, et al, one of my favorite sites is a plant data base at U of Connecticut. Here's a link to the Cornus (dogwood) Kousa page. The screen is split, the left hold data and the right displays images. At the bottom of the left hand window are variations of the sub-group.
http://www.hort.uconn.edu/plants/c/corkou/corkou1.html
Here's a little inspiration for Sozobe. If one has the time and patience you can acquire
this
Wowsa! I love the "left over plant garden"! And, I wish there were more pix of the Monet garden!
Kousa seems a little big for that particular spot, or is it?
I've noticed the Uconn site, that does seem a good one.
I haven't read this through yet, but it looks informative...
http://ohioline.osu.edu/b865/b865_01.html
A standard tree-kousa would be big, the wlf eyes shoyuld be mid-sized. Then there are the shrubs.......
We didn't have Cornuses (corni?) in LA; up here I'm a beginner with them. I have two C. capitata in my yard and one, erm, maybe stolonifera, the yellow twigged shrub
The red, yellow and cream twigged shrubs could be good there. I'm thinking that the variegated quality is the important thing. I don't have a good grasp about the size needed for that garden.
One thing I forgot to mention is that I went to one of my two favorite nurseries the other day and got a long list of shade garden plants -- looks very useful, will transfer some of it here for opinions.
At this point, I don't plan to do much in the front beyond filling the hole. I can't quite formulate a gardening goal -- perhaps if I saw an example? I'd like something aesthetically pleasing (precise, eh?), as low-maintenance as possible (i.e. beautiful and low-maintenance is perfect, but I'll make an exception for some beautiful things if I just plain love them), and that works well with the house and major landscape features (like the elm). I'll probably make changes incrementally.
I'm not too concerned about a more overarching design plan for the back -- the basics are all there, just am going to put in some more groundcover and flowers, to start with anyway. I think some of the trees will have to go sooner or later, and in five years or something might start thinking about what trees need to go, what trees I want to plant, etc. (I'm pretty sure none of the trees back there were consciously planted, either already there in the 20's when the house was built or weeds that were allowed to keep growing...)
Rain has stopped, will be taking pictures soon... (Could've today if I had film, but I don't. Maybe tomorrow.)
When you take pictures, how about one towards the elm? and one towards the elm from both driveways?
Yep, plan to aim towards the canopy, too, so you can see what kind of shade it casts.
Plan to do it today, if all goes well may have the pics online as early as this evening.
Place a few caterpillars in the pictures, soz.
Just to add a little spice.
Missed the caterpillars, durn it.
OK, I have an album with captions online, if you guys (osso and littlek) PM me your email addresses, I'll invite you and then you can view them. (Actually I may have littlek's email address but not sure if it's current...)
