The Back Yard is Finished!!

Our major landscaping project is complete!!  At least until the spring, when we will add a few more big plants that were unavailable this late in the year.  I am SO excited about how beautiful the yard already looks, and how in just a year or two it will fill out even more and begin to look lush and mature.  What I love about the plans that my Mom gave us to work with is that the bones of the layout give the yard structure and balance throughout the year-- even in the winter, thanks to so many evergreen bushes and trees-- with pretty low maintenance and the flexibility to add in smaller flowering plants and herbs as we like.  Plus there is a great mixture of different hydrangeas and roses to give us tons of cut flowers all summer long.  I've pretty much died and gone to heaven.

The Christmas tree shaped evergreens you can see up against the fence line almost the whole perimeter of the back yard, and these arborvitae get huge.  Eventually, they will fill out so much that they create a wall of green surrounding the whole space, giving the yard a private, secluded feel.

One of the places we're leaving empty until the spring, when the plants we need will arrive, is the area between the main yard and the back "secret garden."  So for now you just have to imagine two tall evergreen tea olive plants that will eventually be trained into an arch to create a doorway into the back garden.

We're also still waiting for a magnolia tree to arrive in the spring for the back right corner where the fence meets the garage.

For the secret garden I'm going to get a bench for the left end and hopefully find a statue for the back side that you'll see as you walk through the archway.  I already have a feeling that this space is going to be my favorite-- with cherry trees, roses, snowball viburnum and hydrangeas, it will be full of summer blooms in peaceful, pastel colors.  I wish winter would hurry up and be over already! :)

xo

Liza