Low maintenance & affordable are ubiquitous in a mission statement.
Why have a perennial garden? Requires skilled labor to maintain & most disappear in winter. Per square foot & volume & maintenance perennials are ridiculously expensive compared to the long life-size-maintenance expense of yew topiary.
.
Yews survive centuries, perennials survive years.
.
Of course Garden Centers & Design-Build-Maintain businesses promote perennials. Perennial flowers are intoxicating. And important to their recurring bottom line.
.
Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
.
Went less maintenance than the above. Used understory trees & groundcover (no mowing) in a checkerboard pattern in the front garden for a young couple with babies in their starter ranch home. How did they get so smart so young? Me? I planted zillions of perennials at their age. Now, only the hardy (iris, dianthus 'bath pink', lenten rose, fern, peony) remain. Zillions more blooms with my flowering shrubs & trees & vines & groundcovers. Love my garden but zero time for much maintenance and became disgusted with the thief of time/money with perennials/annuals and don't get Puppet Barbuda started on the dreadful eco impact of perennials/annuals. You know, greenhouses, heating/cooling, water, soils, pallets, insecticides, fungicides, fertilizers, 18-wheeler trucks.
.
Pic via My French Country Home
brilliant point and oh so true!
ReplyDeletexo
debra
If I could afford that property in the photo, I might have a space like that with all those blooms - it is stunning, for a short time. But I would also be able to afford someone to care for all that land, to the fussiest perennials.
ReplyDeleteRight-on on how to save time and money, Puppet B. I'm about to post on what lasts in a hard country...
So agree. Like most young gardeners, I was seduced by blooming plants. Now at 63, I'm a woody plant girl. I plant hostas in window boxes and set them out in the garden at the end of the season. Otherwise, I enjoy th parade of blooms from trees and shrubs...and I have no grass!
ReplyDeleteWow. What a great idea -- those white daffodils!
ReplyDeleteWow. What a great idea -- those white daffodils!
ReplyDeleteI am planting my yew hedge in the Spring. I wanted it now but the wallet said NO!
ReplyDeleteThe photo above is stunning. I cannot imagine the amount of TIME that takes!
I need three more Andies...well more effective Andies.
I need to get off the computer...that gives me ONE Andie to get the WORK done!
xo
Andie
Can you please post a photo of the front yard checkerboard? I SO loved the bluestone checkerboard you did in the back of the home that you posted a few weeks ago! Yew is lovely but here the deer love to nosh on it. Be well!
ReplyDeleteWow. What a great post.
ReplyDeleteBy
Kenzie Rowan
Landscaping Virginia
Really very informative post.
ReplyDeleteBy
Kenzie Rowan
Landscaping Virginia
Phlox makes me so happy - can't imagine not enjoying it every summer.
ReplyDelete