Dry Garden Do Over: This Year’s Progress

Well, so far I’ve done a fair bit of cleaning up of this area. Thus far it has consisted of:

• Removing (relocating) the Ohio Spiderwort plants
• Thinning and Isolating the Anise Hyssop
• Removing the thousands (millions???) of Indiangrass seedlings
• Removing the small clumps of Iris and adding them to existing swaths
• Pulling up California Poppies in areas that I don’t want reseeded
• Removing the ever-flopping Artemesia

Its made a world of difference so far in the general look of the garden. Hooray!

I’ve adopted a bit of a new brief on the garden- Sunny Cottage Garden- and opened up the color scheme to bring in more of the mauve-y pinks of the Echinacea and more of the apricot colors of the California Poppies. This has allowed me to bring in more plants and better address the problem areas. The color scheme is now purples (50%), apricots (20%), mauves (25%) and whites (5%), like this.

Critically looking at this space has also allowed me to identify a few (tiny) areas that have become part-shade. The original plants in that area had become sparse and lanky due to the shade from the Veg Garden fence. This, excitingly, meant I could add in a few new plants like hostas and ferns that I NEVER thought I could have in this garden.  These new plants are thriving and give a much lusher feel to the area.

This means more of the following plants:

• ‘Autumn Joy’ Sedum
• Daylily (an apricot variety with a deep mauve throat and a small mauve variety- both of which previously lived at the back of the house
• ‘Magic Carpet’ Spirea, for both the lime foliage, compact rounded shape, and mauvey pink flowers
• New England Aster
• Elephant Ear Hosta

Obviously none of this looks like all that much right now. But. I have high hopes for next year and the changes it will bring to this whole space. The changes aren’t done, next year will bring a new round of (hopefully fewer) changes to make the space the best it can be.

Its been a really great exercise for me to go over this space with a really critical, dispassionate eye to figure out what wasn’t working, what was holding me back, and what direction to move towards. I’m so glad to say I’m happy with the progress so far and cannot wait to see its progress next year!