Spring has arrived here in the northern hemisphere. This means the temperatures go up and we're having more sunny days. This also makes it more attractive to go out into the garden. The garden that has been neglected since fall last year. Some of the bushes on the sides have grown bigger and there has formed a gap in the middle. So we figured it was time to reorganise it a bit.

This is the before picture:

When we bought the house in 2017 the house had already been unoccupied for more than a year. The previous owners hadn’t done anything with the garden for a long time either. So when we bought the house, the backyard was like a big jungle. Over the years we have paved a large part of the backyard. We like to sit sit outside when the weather is good, so we have created a terrace in the back of our garden and one right behind our house. We did like the green look of the background, so we decided to keep the middle part of the backyard open for plants and trees. It would serve the purposes of a green view from the house, some shade from the sun in hot summers and give us a bit more privacy too. Apart from the center garden I have a small 'vegetable garden' on the right side as well and some plants and trees alongside the fence.

Here is a photo of how the backyard looked like when we bought the house.

The plants and trees

We have a couple of nice trees and bushes which are doing quite well. Some others are doing less well or aren't very nice in winter. As you can see on the first photo in this blog, there is a 'gap' in the middle which makes the garbage containers in the back of our backyard visible. So we want to do some reorganization. But what do we have now? In the front on the left we have a Ceanothus which we planted in 2018 as a small plant. It has grown so fast and is really big now. It is attached to the pole since it is leaning towards our terrace. The Ceanothus will have beautiful purple blossoms in may and it gives us some shade and privacy, so that will certainly stay. On the left of the Ceanothus we have a snowberry which should be cut back a little. Behind the Ceanothus is a plum tree. In the middle we have a rose bush. Although I love it when the rose is in bloom (it has beautiful pink flowers), we can only enjoy this for a short time in the year. Apart from that it is growning taller and taller every year. And the lower, wooden part of the plant isn't that nice, so we deviced to remove the rose. The tree on the right is a Gray or alder willow. A nice tree that gives us shade and privacy in summer, but is barren in winter. On the right side of that we have a liguster; nice wintergreen bush. Unfortunately it has grown all over our terrace and path. It also battles for space with the laurel bush that is right behind it. We have to choose one of them, so the liguster has to go. Behind the liguster we also have a Rhododendron. This is a bush that will have beautiful flowers, but is really surrounded by other, faster growing bushes. Finally, in the back on the right we have a butterfly bush. In the middle we have some undefined bushes and plants that don't really add something to the garden, so we'll remove those as well.

Liguster - Laurel - Rhododendron (invisible 😂) - Butterfly bush

Into action

We want to make the center of the square a bit greener, so we've decided to remove the rose and other undefined plants from the center and move the Rhododendron to the middle in the front and place the larger Laurel in the center in the back. This will give us a greener view from our house during the year (these two will stay green in winter too). They also prevent us from seeing the garbage containers in the back of the garden too 😁

After removing the rose you can see the 'hidden' Rhododendron which we will move to the open space in the front.

At the border of the garden I also had some mint herbs. Since I had to so some serious digging and I wanted to preserve my mint, I dug them out, cut them up and placed them in some small containers. I really hope they will survice this. But I'm confident they will since they are very strong plants that also survive our winters. I'll plant them back as soon as I have moved the big bushes.

During my digging in the garden, I heard a lot of buzzing around me. On the other side of the garden I have a Japonese Maple that is in bloom and also my Almond tree is blossomming, but the sound was a bit closer. When I looked up I noticed that the sound was coming from bees that were collecting nectar from the pussy willows. I don't think people with hay fever will like it since they produce a lot of pollen. At least the bees like it. I can't wait for my apple and plum tree to blossom too.

The result

It was a hard days work, with a lot of digging, sawing, pulling and cutting, but the result is worth it, if I say so myself. Check it out yourself below.

The Rhododendron is now in the front and has enough space to grow bigger. While moving it I noticed it has quite a lot of flower buds already, so I can't wait for it to blossom. I hope it recovers well from the move. The Laurel in the back is keeping the garbage containers nicely out of sight and will give us some more privacy when it grows a bit bigger. The Ceanothus on the left has been pruned and I've also straightened it a bit so it doesn't hang over our terrace anymore. Finally I also pruned the snowberry a bit, so it has some better proportions again.

Next steps

The garden looks a bit more bare than when I started. Especially on the right side where I removed the Liguster. I already have some plans for plants to place there. I want some nice flowering plants that are also green in winter, but don't grow too tall. I used ChatGPT to help me look for it, which is a really great tool to get ideas of all kinds, also for garden ideas. It came up with Lavender, which I didn't know stayed green in winter, but some species do. The advantage of Lavender is that it doesn't grow too tall, blooms for a long time (june-august) and smells delicious. I didn't have time for it today, but I'll buy me some plants tomorrow. And when I'm at the garden depot, I'll also buy something to make the soil around the rhododendron more acidic, because they like that.

I might also get some rectangular containers to put the mint plants back in. I will bury then into the soil, but the container will prevent the mint to spread uncontrollably like they were doing before.

So, this was it for this update. I will show you the progress in a following update, so keep following my blogs 🌳🌲🪴😊

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