SO EXCITED!! I'm the new 'landscaper'!!!!!!!

[canesisters]

Need some possible plant lists....

The office is pine tree heaven so I'll need some things that are:
1. happy or at least tolerant of acid soil
2. not require constant watering (the mgr won't do it but I might be able to get away with setting a sprinkler during lunch once or twice a week)
3. provide color in those big round beds at the end of the walk

Once the liriope takes hold on the left side I think that will be sufficient for along the walk. I don't know if you can tell, but there is a long bed along the right - from the porch to the end of the building. It's got myrtles and some sort of evergreen shrub (a holy of some sort??). There is a lot of spaces between them all. It's very shady there, and also acid... All I can think of right off is lenten rose.


The Box right now has 3 variegated euonymus in the back and a bunch of some thing that I haven't found a name of yet. It has a naturally small, round shape. The pointed leaves stay red (or in this case - faded, sun burnt looking paleish red-ish). They are widely used here in shopping center parking lots. There is a fragrant olive living amongst the base of one of the euonymus. If I can get it out in one piece, I might take it home... Or maybe.. since the olive is a volunteer, I should take out the leggy, weak looking euonymus and plant 2 more olives (which will require pruning several times a year to keep small..). This area is HOT and dry. It is quite literally in the middle of a large paved area. And I have to watch the height of anything I put here because the signs must be visible.

Plenty of time for plant choosing. Still have many hours of weeding ahead of me yet.

Some good ideas Bay. I was thinking about some of those purple cabbages and maybe some pansies for The Box. Possibly moving the red bushes from The Box to the entrance sign area where they will get a little bit of shade and not have such heat to deal with.

 

[digitS']

So! You are receptive to the idea of annuals for "The Box," Cane'??

If it is a good place for potatoes, how about their Solanaceae relative, the petunia?

Or, if that was just a gesture towards the annuals . . . there are tender Solanaceae perennials that may grow okay in your part of the world - I just don't know. Datura & Brugmansia would be fun to grow but I haven't screwed up my courage to start them in the greenhouse and I'm fairly certain that they wouldn't get thru a winter here. Do they grow as perennials where you are? (Just a little fantasy I have .)

Of course, there is the Solanaceae nicotiana. Would they be perennials?

If you have some good storage for roots - dahlias? Of course, they can be grown as the shorter annuals from seed. That would be true with the nicotiana.

Steve

 

[897tgigvib]

The things behind your Euonymous may be Barberry. Carefully stick your hand in the shrub and see if it is prickly, or check by looking. I believe they may be the dwarf Japanese kind or one of the new hybrid varieties. Yes, they are used a lot on shopping center parking lots these days.

One of my truly favorite shade to almost full sun lovers, (long as it gets afternoon shade), is Huechera. They take to acidic soil even if it also has calcium, an unusual acid soil lover. Also called Coral Bells. Some species have purple-black leaves, others have lime green leaves, some apricot or coppery. A variety called Canyon Bells makes a very beautiful stalk of soft red flowers.

If you have a deep shade area you probably know about Hostas.

Spirea shrubs can be stunning. There are different sorts of them. I like that variety called Bubble Gum. Nice neat plant. A similar also nice one is called Golden (something, can't recall). One called Van somethingerother grows person tall and does some weeping, and flowers profuse white flowers.

I like the idea of bulbs. There is a real tall lily called Scheherazade I saw in a catalog to consider.

 

[journey11]

Oh wow, you do have your work cut out for you. But just think of the satisfaction you'll have as you're walking past it each day when you go to work. And to get paid to do something you enjoy! (Although, as bad as they've let the place go...it's almost a charity cause! LOL)

I thought those looked like pines.... Here's a suggestion, something I heard of recently that will give you more options on what you can grow there and also provide some seasonal color as whatever perennials you choose are growing and filling in. You can dig holes and line them with empty nursery pots, then buy potted plants (mums would be good for fall) and you set them, pot and all, down into that hole. They will look planted, but they are still in the pot, but nobody will know. The extra nursery pot serves as a placeholder to keep the dirt from caving back in, and you can change out the flowers out as needed or seasonally. I guess a lot of parks and other public places landscape that way. Keeps it looking fresh.

 

[canesisters]

TOTALLY receptive to ideas here Steve!!
I'm going to have to look up the ones listed so far. Many of them are not familiar to me yet. Since the selection at our local ACE is not usually very broad, I've talked with my local 'Mom & Pop' feed/garden store and she is willing to try and include anything special that I want to get when she places her fall orders for all the mums and such.
I wish I could get some better pictures.
Don't worry Marshall, I'm only planning to prune the bushy little branches that are low on the myrtles' main trunks. Those twisted, peeling trunks are far too pretty to lop off!! Just enough that the view out the windows is lawn framed by trunks instead of myrtle branches mushed up against the glass.
Spirea huh? White flowers in that deep shade would be lovely!! I'll have to look more info on them.
Joruney that is a great idea for around the pines! I could easily and quickly pop things out and in.

eta: The little red shrub/plant isn't barberry - no thorns. After a good exam this morning:
stems: lots of woody stems 4"- 12" high. Each stem topped with a crown of small stems each of those having groups of 3 very firm, slightly waxy leaves.
leaves: in groups of 3, smooth surface and edges. longer than wide and pointed at the end. They have a slight downward curve. The leaves deeper in the plant are green and small - the ones on the surface are larger and red and they seem to have changed color as they .... got more light? aged?? Several of the outer leaves have red bases with green tips but I can't tell which way they're going. Red to green, or green to red.
No berries or anything like that. They've been sitting out there like a bunch of red/green basketballs for years - so they either don't get bigger than 12", or can't in their present location.
They also haven't spread in any way - or started any baby plants nearby. I don't recall ever seeing any sort of bloom on them.
I see these little things everywhere, but don't know what they are. Just about every parking lot has some edging the curb or grouped into a large mound.

 

[StonyGarden]

How exciting!! As a landscaper now myself (mostly building patios but also cutting grass, clean up jobs, etc) I see lots of potential! That box concerns me a bit. How stable is the box? It looks like railroad ties form the box. Are they solid or are they rotting and getting soft? Since it's so hot up there I'd definitely look for drought resistant plants. How about some small shrubs in the middle and a ground cover around the edges. Something that will flower and dress up the box itself.

 

[canesisters]

Oh wow! How great for you! Doesn't it just seem better to get paid for something you enjoy doing?

The Box is sturdy. It's stacked railroad ties - they're getting old but still good - or at least they are still HEAVY.
The problem of all that baked soil has been bothering me. I really think that it might be best to remove everything in The Box and add a little compost before doing anything else. Then, maybe burrying a few soda bottles so they can get slow watering when it's dry.

I'm trying to pay attention to what I'm pulling out as weeds. These would be things that apparently like what ever conditions are already there. Like the fragrant olive (not really an olive, right??) and morning glories - both are volunteers in The Box. And spikey little hollys up in the office beds.

N.M.Gardener - I've been trying to get them to start a compost/shreading operation here for years. I've heard that the county already has a heavy duty shreader sitting somewhere unused - and a bobcat loader over behind the courthouse in 'storage'. We get TONS of brush debris every spring and after storms, and it all goes back to the landfill. I keep saying that if they'd clear an area next to the 'convience area' (large rolloff cans below a raised ramp) then they could take the brush and sell back cheap mulch to offset the cost of staffing it a couple of hours a week. Who knows, if this landscape reno thing goes well - maybe they'll listen to me about that too.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Cane, thats what the City of Fayetteville Arkansas does. Any trimmings the clean-up crews bring in and the brush that city residents drop off get shredded. No charge for drop-off for a city resident. They sell the shredded stuff to anyone that wants it real cheap, probably to try to get rid of it. They also compost a bunch and sell that for more, but only to city residents. Im in the county so I cant buy compost or drop off, but I can and often do buy wood chips.

I dont know what their economics are. I strongly suspect the taxpayers subsidize the operation to keep that stuff out of the landfill. If you really want to, you could maybe contact someone in their waste disposal department and chat about economics. Im not going to call for you but Ill look up the phone number if you want me to.