I have a 20'x6' bed along the south side of my house between my house and the alley. There are three shrubs that are full sized and came with my house: a lilac, a barberry, and a snowball viburnum. A much more knowledgeable neighbor and I just heavily pruned back the shrubs, shortening them to 6'-7', cutting away all suckers, and cutting back all but about a half a dozen interesting branches in each. I plan on cutting back new suckers to keep them looking neat and architectual rather than allowing them to return to their overgrown monsterish state. I would like to underplant them with perennials. Do you have any suggestions?
Ideas needed for a new bed
to maintain an architectural look you could plant http://www.perennials.com/seeplant.html?item=1.490.520 (purple beaty sempervivum.
Thanks for the idea! I will definately use some sedum. When I said architectural, I meant that I want to keep the shape of the shrubs. I am still interested in finding some interesting perennials to plant underneath. I've attached a picture to give an idea of what the bed looks like.
Katie
By the way, all that bare ground was covered by suckers and overhang from the shrubs until yesterday afternoon.
This message was edited Jul 29, 2005 12:30 PM
Katie--neat project and the bushes look beautiful 'arborized'!
One thought--when you choose your perennials, you might want to keep in mind the paint colors of your house and bring out the window trim color in your planting scheme... Is your window trim a brownish red? Is your barberry red-leaved in summer?
I wonder if your soil is pretty good or are you planning to amend it? With a south facing garden you have a wide range of choices unless there is a lot of shade from the buildings across the alley... mmm What are you thinking of?
You could choose almost anything...very exciting project!
This is my red daylily with blanket flowers (to tie in with your window trim!) and coreopsis for a really bright (easy maintenance) July look...(might be too intense for your space, but it can be softened (as I did) with daisies and rudbeckias and other less intense daylilies around it...
Tabasco:
How beautiful!!!!
As for your questions:
I get mid afternoon shade but morning and early evening sun.
The soil is pretty nice. It's fairly loose and has a decent amount of organic material. I am planning on adding a lot of leaf compost to the bed, too.
The barberry is red.
I like the idea of including some reds. The bed that is behind the new bed has brown/orange rudbeckia and orange ditch lilies. I may add some red to that bed, too.
Salvias look great in underplantings, they look great and can take sun and shade. Mitch
I think I'd load the area up with masses of bulbs.
Oh, yes! You Must have some bulbs blooming with your Lilac. Then you can overplant with your perennials.
I don't know if you have a good bulb supplier, but eFlowerGarden have a great basic bulb selection and they were having a sale...don't know if it's still on though...
http://www.eflowergarden.com/index.htm
Our DG contact for eflowergarden is Bleek, and he is quite helpful. Other suppliers I use include Brent & Becky, VanEngelen and EZ to Grow Bulbs.
I am planting out a new garden space too, but it is shade/part-shade so I am choosing from a different range of plants. Your project looks more fun to me!
I planted lots of different daffodils around our gardens but didn't plant tulips because of the critters loving to eat the bulbs, and if the tulip bulbs don't get eaten, then the deer eat the plants...so heartbreaking. But the critters stay away from daffs and alliums and muscari.
Some of my bulb bloom this year:
tabasco--A little trick that really works that I learned from my neighbor is to plant a daffodil bulb in every hole that you put a tulip in, or any other bulb that critters will dig up. We have squirrels that dig up anything but daffodils so we put those on top and have double the fun for our money and the squirrels move on.
Bulbs come and go early in the spring before your perennials will be getting going and the perennials will cover up the bulb foliage as it matures. If you plan it right, you will have color all the way from March until October, and that's a long time! Some things like Lambs' Ears are just good color and the flowers don't matter much. You have such a beautiful space to work with.
This message was edited Aug 3, 2005 2:13 AM
What a fun project! Very pretty area and house. I agree with tabasco about incorporating the color of the house trim. Bronzy leaved heucheras came to mind and some Asiatic and Oriental lilies could be nice. I can see some silvery leaved plants being pretty to echo the color of the house to. Have fun! Neal.
I'd definitely put some peonies in there. Some tall plants like delphiniums or larkspur altho they may not be the colors you like. But plants like them thay grow spikey. Leave room for some colorful annuals - zinnias and the like. What about dahlias?
It looks like a nice area - you should have fun with that.
Just a thought since you said you have red there and you also have the lilac. What about keeping the colors sort of red, white, and blue-ish.
Gwen