Daily Home Renovation Tips

Now that the leak in our front garden is fixed, we can continue with our remodeling efforts to make our front garden not only one that is visually appealing but one that is also low / no maintenance.

We are at the point where we are ready to continue the plan created for us by our garden planner.

In the closeup of the plan above you can see two beds underneath each of the two windows of the garage wall. While the plan has the letter ‘D’, this was a mistake by the planner; she meant to have the letter C in its place which has been used for the Taxus Media Hillii, or Hill’s Yew.

This is a slow growing evergreen with dark green needles. N0w I am a little concerned because usually this plant is used in areas with full or partial sun. The area underneath the garage windows received next to no direct sunlight. However, let’s go with it. If this doesn’t work and the plants die we have a year to return them for something else.

I used the garden cart (remember, I don’t do wheel barrels any more ) to move the 6 Hill’s Yews from the garage (where we have been storing them for a week) out to the garden. I then placed them in the dirt to check for their placement before I started to dig the holes. I wanted to be sure that they lined up with two of the Hill’s Yews in both edges of each of the 2 windows with one in the center.

Then I simply used the space to dig the hole for each close to the garage wall so they would be in the background. Once done, I placed a moderate amount of Bone Meal in each hole covered with some of the triple mix, followed by some water from the garden hose so the roots of each plant would have a nice moist area to welcome them to their new home.

Now, these plants were encased in a peat moss container, not the black plastic container used for the Pyramidal Yews. I remembered from previous gardening efforts in other houses that we have to cut the bottom of from each container so allow the roots to actually reach the newly fertilized and moist soil.

Once each plant was in it’s hole, then the standard filling of the space around the plant with the triple mix soil, stepping around the outside to make sure it was secure, followed by more triple mix was accomplished.

The last thing we did was to ensure that the soil of the garden was again sloping away from the garage wall. We wanted to ensure that the water did not stay in the shady area of the garden as it had in the past to create moss, etc.

The 3 Hill’s Yews on the left are partially hidden by the large Hostas plants in the front part of the garden. That’s OK. the Hostas will not be around in the winter. And, remember that I want a low / no maintenance garden. These Yew’s are slow growing, but they can get to 5 feet high and 4 feet wide, so I am willing to bide my time.

Here is a view of the garden after the planting of the Hill’s Yew’s. What do you think? Our neighbour, Mr. Rob Robbin likes it so much he had to come over to tell me so.

Here is another view of the entire front house with the 6 Hill’s Yew’s in place.

We are not nearly done yet with our garden makeover. Still lot’s to do.

To continue with the next article in this series, simply select this link to Part 14.