Saturday, May 5, 2012

Foundation Plantings

Last fall we saw some plants on sale for cheap at Home Depot and decided to go ahead and get a little bit of foundation planting happening, now that we finally have gutters.  These were sort of impulse purchases and we'll move them somewhere else if they don't seem suitable in a few years.  We have to start somewhere though so we might as well put in some pretty ones.
 
 
I can't remember the name of the rhododendron on the left, but it has the potential to become rather large, which I think will look okay at the corner of the house.
 
 
In the middle we have three knockout roses in the pale "Blushing" pink color which will hopefully grow together into one large mass. They are supposed to bloom all summer long. I think the pale pink looks nice against our gray siding.
 
 
Doug saw the rhododendron below and on the right in the upper picture and he just had to have it.  It's a very pale pink with darker pink edges.  It will hopefully stay on the smallish side - it's supposed to be a dwarf variety.  We'll see.
 

So far they've survived without the deer munching on them.  But we did use deer spray over the winter.
 
The hill by the fence used to have a retaining wall instead of a hill.  We planted a nice row of azaleas that were mostly in the shade of our former house.  Then the house got torn down, the retaining wall got taken out, the liriope got planted, we got busy building the new house ourselves, and the hillside got completely overgrown with weeds and vines and the azaleas have suffered from a combination of too much sun and strangulation by weeds.  I've been pruning the dead wood to see if they'll perk up, but I'm not too hopeful.  They look pretty sad.  I guess I'll leave them in for now and see how they do now that the weed situation is lessening.  I can't wait for the liriope to finally take over! 
 

I'm sure I'll be pruning them some more, but I think I need to do it in stages for now.