Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Which is Cheaper: Yew or Perennial ?


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.
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Yews survive centuries, perennials survive years.
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Of course Garden Centers & Design-Build-Maintain businesses promote perennials.  Perennial flowers are intoxicating.  And important to their recurring  bottom line.
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Garden & Be Well,             XO Tara
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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.
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Pic via My French Country Home

10 comments:

  1. 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.

    Right-on on how to save time and money, Puppet B. I'm about to post on what lasts in a hard country...

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  2. 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!

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  3. Wow. What a great idea -- those white daffodils!

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  4. Wow. What a great idea -- those white daffodils!

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  5. I am planting my yew hedge in the Spring. I wanted it now but the wallet said NO!
    The 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

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  6. 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!

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  7. Phlox makes me so happy - can't imagine not enjoying it every summer.

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