Side Yard Real Estate

Commonly, side yard real estate is ignored.  Perhaps a nod to creating a 'nice' pass-through, at most.
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They got the memo, below.  An entire garden room in their 'side yard'.
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More, they completed every layer of the memo.  Gravel to the house, no foundation planting, and a wall, evergreen shrubs, for privacy.  Pure architecture.  


Pic, above, here.
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Off topic, a sign of the current era of nursery plants, above.  Since the debacle of 2008, commercial nursery contraction, retail nursery contraction, wholesale grower contraction, decent plants are rare.  Plantings at the edge of the graveled garden room, above, are the new normal.  Prior to 2008, my team would have returned those plants as culls.  Worse, guessing from the photo, in addition to fertilized spindly growth, they're probably loosely rooted, perhaps a season or 2 from being bumped up into larger containers.  In the era prior to 2008 it was considered unethical to sell plants newly bumped up/not rooted in.  Now, normal.  It gets worse.  The new normal costs much more.  Labor a huge cost burden to growers, then, again, labor a huge cost burden to crews planting.  Patented plants add another layer of cost.
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A new generation of labor crew leaders has arrived since 2008, how are they to know the new plants at the edge of the gravel garden room, above, are culls?
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For decades, new plantings had to be turned for their best 'front' at planting.  Humorous concept, now, when plants have no 'front' at all. See the gravel, above, thru the foliage of plantings along the concrete?  In the past, plants were so full of vigorous lush foliage, zero gravel would be visible thru them.
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A recent job, we indeed received gorgeous thick lush plants, heavy in their pots & well rooted.  Good timing.  The wholesaler is probably weeks from bumping up plants that haven't sold, into larger pots.  
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Of course Home Depot, Lowe's, and Wal-Mart each forced consolidation of the retail nursery sector prior to 2008.  Most of their current plant purchases are on contract, with the plant wholesaler agreeing to unload/stock shelves with their employees, and take back plants that die or look poorly.  Another layer of cost to you, the retail plant buyer.
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Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.  Could not have imagined these industry changes when I began working it ca. 1985.  Of course back in those days, it gave me my Garden Design career.  The family nursery I worked for did not offer Garden Design, nor keep any employees who did Garden Design.  Why?  Their attitude was an employee doing Garden Design, on their own time, would steal plants.  Why didn't they think an employee doing Garden Design would be buying plants from them?  A customer, not thief.  Their thinking proved detrimental, they bankrupted & had to sell.  Our nursery team mentioned more than once, 'wish they would give us a pay/purchase option in company stock'.  Ironically, the company owning that nursery now, is employee owned.  Go team !  
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Garden & Be Well,    XOT