Mid-Atlantic Gardening: Spring Projects Anyone?, 1 by rcn48

rcn48 wrote:

Quoting:Ric, leave it to you to make a new friend whos an avid gardener...

Took the words right out of my mouth! LOL An "avid gardener" AND a stone house, right up your alley! Looks like paradise to me :)

Thanks so much for the compliments, I worked my butt off to get the last project accomplished - the gardens surrounding the arbor/steps! I had hoped to get it done for the first weekend of our Open House but just wasn't possible. So bright and early the the following Monday morning I kicked into high gear to hopefully get it done for the second weekend! First problem was all the rain we had over the weekend, I could get down the neighbor's driveway to get the rocks but then I couldn't drive into our field to unload them :( And yes, Gita, I carried them all myself :) Rick's got a bad back and if I keep up with this rock fetish of mine, I'll be joining him soon! LOL It wouldn't have been so bad if I could have just dropped them "at the site" but I had to unload them in our driveway and carry each one down the path to the slope :( Definitely slowed down the process but I was determined to get it done before Saturday! I totally ignored all the other work that should have been done in the gardens (weeds, etc.) and finally by Thursday was ready to start planting. First up was digging up that humongous (sp?) Hosta and getting it transplanted! I thought I took a picture of the back side - you can't tell from the picture, it almost looks normal but it's a 7+ year old Hosta with 20-25 eyes and I had to tie it up so it wouldn't fall over! Little by little it all came together and by Friday noon I was ready to make the trip to pick up more mulch. Unfortunately I was running out of time as the black clouds started rolling in around 3:00 and when the clouds opened up a half hour later there were still a few areas that didn't get any mulch but at least it "looked" finished! I have a few more plants laid out for planting and I'm still trying to figure out where a few more are going to go - all in good time :)

Holly, the blue flowers are Polemonium 'Bressingham Purple' http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/56492/. I've planted it before without much success but I'm hoping it will be happy here! The other plant with the "V shaped markings" is Persicaria 'Red Dragon' http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/1134/. Another one I'm "testing" in this area. The one I've had planted in another area of the gardens for years always tends to lose the bright contrast of the foliage because I think it's in too much shade? So I've planted two along this edge of the gardens where they receive morning sun and I'm hoping they'll keep the beautiful variegation and be happier here. This is the other one I planted last fall. I actually moved it a little to the right last week after planting the Euphorbias and Heucheras :)