Daily Home Renovation Tips

In Part 18,   we talked about our like of the Hostas plans and their flowers. However, did you notice that there really isn’t very much colour in our two side gardens (on either side of the front door) or in the main front garden?

Well, there isn’t. There will be next year when the Climbing Hydrangea hopefully starts to produce flowers (I don’t think it will this year). But still, more colour is needed.

Yes, the colour needs to fall in with our goal to have as maintenance free garden as possible. I don’t consider annual flowering plants to be maintenance free. So, what to do?

Well, if we look at our garden plan we can see that two trees are missing from the main garden.

We have spent more money on the garden so far, and therefore need to wait until the trees goes on sale in the fall (not too long from now). There is a tree farm near by that we plan to visit when they have their fall sale. Fall is actually a really good time to plant new trees. You don’t usually get the hot temperatures of the summer but do usually receive lot’s of rain in the fall.

We plan on purchasing (depending on what we see that is on sale) two Emperor Japanese maples. Their reddish colour will blend in nicely with the brick of the house yet be a nice offset to the dark greens of the Pyramidal Yews and the Hills Yews in the main garden. Or, perhaps one of these and a Magnolia as per the garden plan for even more colour. The plan does suggest a Weeping Caragana as one of the two trees in the front garden but we just don’t like the look of this plant. We would rather see tree branches pointed up towards the heavens than pointed down towards, well, … a much hotter place. 

As well, planting these trees in the area of the garden that is away from the house will add much needed visual depth to the garden. Right now, pretty much all of the main front garden is within 3 to 4 feet of the garage wall.

We also plan to invest in several different types of Tulip bulbs in the fall. While limited to the spring, we really like tulips. If planted in bunches, you can add some very substantial colours to a garden. And, not all tulips come up at once. By purchasing different types of tulips you can maximize the number of weeks that you have tulip plants flowering in your garden.

We just need to make sure that we have the shorter tulips in the front part of the garden and the taller ones further back, being careful to anticipate how large the Hostas plants will spread.

Lastly, we also plant to add ground cover. In our last house we has some read cedar chips on our front garden and really liked the look. The bright red should look very nice against the red brick of the house.

We have also had cocoa beans as the ground cover in another of our prior houses. It was yet a different look, but also very nice. However, it needed topping up every spring as the cocoa beans tended to disintegrate each year more than cedar mulch.

I’m not sure which would look best with a front garden as large as this one which is 25 feet wide along the garage wall and 16 feet deep at one end and 24 feet deep at the other end. That is a lot of garden. We’ll need to think about the type of mulch. But, I’m leaning to the red cedar mulch as it’s colour would reduce the need for more plants from a colour perspective in the garden. The less plants the less maintenance.

That is where our head is at on this. If you have any ideas, please feel free to send us an email or add a comment to this article. Tell us your ideas before its too late and we spend more money on our garden makeover.