Gardening Rhode Island Style

 The first big gardening project is DONE!!!! It took about a month thanks to the abundance of rain this May/June, but I can now more or less sit back and maintain the new landscape.

The first phase was cleaning out the hosta bed that runs alongside the driveway. These puppies are huge and it took quite a bit of work to get just four of them out of the ground. These were already in place when we moved in last summer, however they didn't really like the direct sunlight and heat of July and they began to look rather sad by August. We had originally intended to dig all of them up and put in a massive spring/summer bulb bed but never quite got our act together.  I settled four taking out four of the eight hostas and planting two blueberries and two jalapenoes in between the hostas. We already have blueberries on the bush. 

The second task was to clean out the beds at the front of the house. Last summer we simply maintained the lanscape on a minimal level, and by this year many of the larger shrubs were horribly overgrown. I spent several hours crawling around under shrubs and hacking off branches with the lopper. The pile of limbs in the picture required 6 yard bags to clean up.

Another angle on the front bed. The azalea had been squished by the boxwood and cedar shrubs and was barely visible under all the green leaves. At least now it can spread its branches a bit. 

Finished bed! The hosta was almost invisible under the boxwood. Now that the boxwood has been trimmed up the hosta is much happier. The other side of the big bed was also trimmed up The MASSIVE boxwood to the left of the front steps was cut waaaaaay back. I've now got some daisies and camelias planted underneath to add some color.

The last major challenge was to get rid of the dead patch of grass that was rapidly taking over the front yard. The goal was to reduce the amount of actual  grass that had to be mowed AND add some color to a primarily green landscape.

Here's the finished product!