Big Projects: Front West Bed [aka Perennial problems]

Since I moved into my house last spring, I have enjoyed the challenge that is my south-facing backyard -- putting in 50 square feet of raised beds, planting shrubs, and my most recent project, a berry patch. I have big plans the next year including more beds, including some on the concrete beside our garage; cold frames to sit on top of my existing beds; and, hopefully in the summer of 2011, a deck.

But I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that my front yard fills me with despair.

The north-facing front yard doesn't get much sun to start with, and much of that is blocked by the (lovely) boulevard trees on our street. Even the lawn doesn't really grow, although the quack grass does -- so prodigiously that this spring it rapidly outpaced our little push-mower and a kind neighbour had to cut it with his gas mower. The beds that I carefully built out of old railway ties last summer and planted with native perennials in the fall this spring sprouted... hardy invasive thistle, more quackgrass, and ants. The temptation at this point is to give up, and possibly replace the small yard with a hot tub, or cover it with gravel, or plant hosta and call it landscaped. (If the hosta would even grow.)

BUT! That is not my style! Fortified by recent successes in the backyard-- blooming peas almost as tall as me, the first tomatoes and strawberries appearing, and the humble beginnings of a berry patch that will, I hope, mean fresh blueberries, raspberries and saskatoons next year-- I have finally found the motivation to try again. With recommendations from a wise gardening co-worker and the friendly people at the Bedrock Seed Bank's Farmer's Market booth, I have planted the following in my front beds:

Bonus: the pathetic grass/weeds are visible. The only reason they're this short is because our
neighbour took pity on us and cut them with his gas mower. Before they were almost waist-height!

• Clematis [back centre, against the fence] -- I don't know how this one will do, but I bought it weeks ago, and I had nowhere else to plant it. I do not have high hopes for it but it should be better in the ground than in its little pot. I also managed to mangle it pretty seriously in the process of trying to remove it from the pot. Sigh. If it survives until next year at all it will be a miracle.

• Euonymus [immediately to the left and right of the clematis] -- at the garden centre on the weekend, I knew we were looking for a mysterious shrub whose name had a lot of vowels. "I can't remember the word. I will recognize it when I see it." I love the variegated leaves of this plant and I hope it does OK in my front bed.

• A plant I got from the Walmart garden centre whose tag identified it as sandwort, arenaria montana [centre front]. But once I got it home and looked it up online, I'm beginning to believe that the plant had had its tag switched as it looks nothing like the arenaria pictures I found. So perhaps it is a mystery. FUN MYSTERY PLANT!

• And a boxwood shrub [right of the clematis], which I bought for $4. I cannot resist a bargain shrub. They are my kryptonite.

• And the ones that Bedrock suggested:

Gooseberry [far left] -- Because it's planted in a bed of old railway ties, we probably won't eat the berries from this plant. But if they bring birds to the garden, perhaps the birds will eat the ants. As a bonus project, I could write a children's book about this.
Meadowsweet [far right]
Maltese Cross[small plants on far left and right, front]

After planting these, I covered the remaining empty parts of the bed with landscape fabric and then with cardboard in an attempt to keep the weeds down until I find more plants for the front. And it has been raining on and off since I planted--Old Testament levels of rain, actually. I have high hopes for actual, non-weed plants in the front yard soon. And I hope to soon mix up some more of my organic fertilizer mix and compost to top-dress this bed, since the soil that went into it last year was the dregs of what we had delivered, and the quality is probably the poorest of all my beds.