I'm Officially A Professional Landscape Designer Today!!!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Well, Dianthus is great for many applications. You might also want to look into Woolly thyme (Thymus pseudolanuginosis) - it stands up to foot traffic, is quite nice looking, flowers nicely, and spreads to three feet, so you wouldn’t need massive amounts of plants (you can also easily divide the plants you buy once they are established). Woolly thyme looks fantastic around pavers and stones; you might want to consider a couple or three ground covers in your yard rather than the grass monoculture - some Dianthus further away from the walk, and Woolly thyme around the rocks or nearest to the pathway. You’d get the green ground-cover, and you’d also get fields of flowers (and Dianthus has a lovely clove scent).

I’d be really tempted to throw some Day Lilies and Asiatic lilies close to your house, too (maybe some Asiatic lilies close to the fence, since they are mostly vertical). The grass doesn’t seem to be thriving there (possibly because of the slope - drains the water away too fast). You could also move your Fountain grass there.

Your fountain grass does seem pretty big - you need something more like a Festuca glauca (Blue fescue) there, or a Molinia caerulea ‘Variegata’ (Moor grass), or Helictotrichon sempervirens (Blue oat grass). They all form smaller, tidy mounds, rather than a large, fountainy plant.

If you can find a lower water usage grass seed, what you can do is gradually replace your grass with it. Just seed your lawn with the lower water grass, then underwater after the new grass has established - the new grass should grow, and your old grass should die off. This is a process - I think it would take a couple of years to get a lower water usage lawn this way.

I really like the idea of using a variety of ground-covers, though. Multiple types of plants are always a good idea; nature abhors a monoculture. If you switch to groundcovers (and I am literally making it my business to help people get their yards off grass :smiley: ), make sure the grass is good and gone first, though. It’ll act like a pesky weed if not.

Hope this helps!

22

Well done, featherlou! I’ll pass the news on to Spoonette, who may have some questions for you about our own back garden.

Good to hear that you’re doing what you love to do. Congratulations!

23

That helps, tremendously. Thank you! Your ideas are intriguing and I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter (seriously, you should consider doing one, if you don’t already). I had considered some kind of creeping thyme, but wasn’t convinced that it would be all that “stepable”, as in, it wouldn’t feel good under bare feet because it’s kindof “twiggy” beneath the leaves. The wooly variety you recommend does look very soft, though, so that’s a definite possibility. I am concerned about height, though. Will it stay relatively low to the ground, so we don’t have to trim it down frequently?

And if you think the fountain grass seems pretty big in that picture, you should see it now. Oh wait, I think I have a more recent picture that shows how grossly HUGEMONGOUS it’s gotten. . . Well, sortof. This still doesn’t do it justice, as it had been recently trimmed down considerably, but you can still get an idea of how wrong it is for that spot. We do have one against the house at the other end of the garden (you can see it on the other side of the image with the bench in the lower end of the yard), and it, too, is gigantic, though it’s much easier too keep trimmed back. I think you’re right, though, that it might be nice to have some flowers up against the house. I do have some day lilies in pots on the patio, so maybe I could repeat a few of those. It might also be nice to have a “cutting garden”, as none of my current flowering plants keep their blooms for any length of time.

The area along the fence I’d like to plant with some kind of tall-growing, flowering vine. Our neighbors on the other side of the fence have a chicken coop there, and they throw all kinds of crap on top of it, making it an eyesore from the higher vantage points. So I want to put up trellises that go higher than the current fence line, then plant something that will give me a nice, green, flowered wall eventually. I had considered espalier-ing some variety of apple trees (I love growing my own food!), but then I learned that they lose all their leaves in the winter, which would defeat the purpose of obstructing the view year-round.

Sadly, I did a bang-up job recently of ridding myself of almost half my grass back there, anyway, trying to kill the bleeping clover that’s infesting it. I’d used that particular product in the past with great success, so I grabbed the bag out of the basement and threw down another application. Only this time it severely burned the grass in splotches all over the place. So now would really be a good time to take it all up and go for the ground cover idea. Short of digging it all up, do you have any recommendations for completely eliminating the grass?

Thank you so much for taking my questions. I kindof felt bad yesterday, like maybe it was an imposition on your expertise. I really appreciate your insight and suggestions!

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BTW, if I had my druthers, my yard would look a lot more like this. I think that’s calming and charming and elegant, and it looks very low maintenance and maybe even kindof fun to garden in. But my husband hates the look of the entire yard being nothing but a big rock garden, so I’m trying to find a nice compromise, by expanding the rock garden out from under the stairs more, and blending it a bit with the path for me, and by replacing the grass with ground cover(s!), and keeping a more “natural” appearance, while still maintaining a softer “yard” feel that Thomas wants.

This is definitely not easy work – my hat’s off to you for your success in it!

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IANALawnExpert, but I do read their columns in magazines!

One remedy I’ve seen several times is to cover the grass with black plastic for a few weeks. This only works if the grass is growing, so that it dies out like it did under your bench. It works best when there’s plenty of sun to bake it really good and kill off the roots. I believe you can then till the dead grass in or pull it up, whichever suits your fancy. (If you didn’t get the roots baked, you’d probably be better off pulling it up!)

I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m going to this spring/summer. I’ve got some yard that needs to be a garden.

26

Round Up can be used to kill grass. My own method has been quite effective - I get my spade and dig shit up. Great exercise. :smiley:

Woolly Thyme is nice and flat - here’s a picture of a good-sized patch of it. It flowers a pretty purple, too.

Thanks, Spoons. I’m not too proud to ask Calgarians to keep me in mind when they need some yard designing done. :slight_smile:

27

Fuckin A! Way to go!

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Thanks, Gut. Let me know when you need your balcony done. :smiley: (You are in an apartment style condo, right? If it’s a townhouse style, then please change that to yard.)

29

Ooooh, you do windowsills too?

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Is there a way to add low-maintenance color to a mostly shady yard in the Chicago area? Other than impatiens, that is?

31

Good going featherlou!

I’ll keep you in mind for when I can afford a house. :wink:

32

If I can talk our condo board into paying for your services after we’ve replaced all the masard roofing you’ll be getting an email from me. I wouldn’t be holding my breath if I were you though.

I don’t know a damn thing about landscape design but I do know our landscaping looks like ass. You get what you pay for and we don’t pay for anything but a weekly mow. The rest is up to us folks living here. I used to have time to pitch in but not anymore. I’m almost never home these days and when I am home I plant my ass in my computer chair or on the couch.

33

Ah, they’ve used a lot of round, moundy bushes, eh?

34

I think lots of round moundy bushes would look much better. At the front of the property there are 2 gigantic pine trees. I mean freaking huge! Underneath them is just dirt. I’m guessing not enough light gets under there for even grass to grow. To the right of them on the front of the property is an overgrown unkempt rose bush. The stalks are a good 8 feet tall and this fall we chopped back a bunch of them because they were becoming a pedestrian hazard. The plan is to chainsaw the rest of it out of there and put something else there.

Next comes the humongous fern looking thing that we also had to chop back due to visibility issues when driving in and out of the property. There are some giant boulders in a semicircle formation and a sort of garden in the semi circle.

Along the front of the building are a bunch of what might be the moundy bushes you mentioned. They have berries but I doubt anybody eats them. Among the moundy bushes is more garden type stuff. There are a couple folks in the building that like doing gardening and they have free reign over the garden areas.

On one side of the building there are 2 more giant pine trees then just an expanse of grass. The neighboring building has a really nice garden on that side. It’s tended by a nice old slightly senile drunk lady.

On the other side of the building there is yet another giant pine tree and some grass. The back of the building, where my deck is, just has a strip of grass that borders with the escarpment down to Edworthy park. We aren’t even allowed to trim the high grass. Just mow up to the property line.
I suppose I could take pictures with my craptacular cell phone but it’s all covered in snow right now anyway. I think someone mentioned filling the dirt area under the giant pine trees in front with gravel or something. That’s about as fancy and financially frivolous as we are.

So uhm, ya, it looks like ass :slight_smile:

35

You could fill under the pine trees with bark mulch. It would at least look nicer than that scorched-earth look that pine trees often create.

36

That’s a much better idea than gravel. Thanks :slight_smile:

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That’s what I get paid for. Mostly theoretically, at this point, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. :slight_smile: