Edging, mulch, and nursery tours

Really they're more like nursery haunts. I have three good nurseries within five miles, and I keep touring them repeatedly this time of year, as if some new shrub will leap into my arms and beg to be mine.  I am running out of space, which is overall a good thing I guess, but it means that I am even more wary of making a choice, in case it's the wrong choice, Also nothing I do will live up to what Brian the most excellent Landscape Architect designed, so I'm inhibited. But that's okay.  I don't mind haunting nurseries.

The very pleasant landscape guys came and edged and lay unfathomable yards of mulch everywhere. Things look really snazzy, at least now that this morning's snow has melted, but I will have to dedicate part of tomorrow to determining where I have shy fern,  tulips, peony,  camassia, baptisia, and groundcover daunted by a uniform blankets of mulch. Landscaping and Gardening are somewhat at odds with each other.

I have several tasks this spring:

1. buy and plant a narrow flowering tree to replace the crab that got et by fireblight

2. choose and plant something to go next to our freshly sealed and snazzy driveway, which will thrive, filter winds, not get too large and yet be large enough, look handsome, entice wildlife, and not be daunted or uprooted by the unused drainage culvert underneath. So, no problem there.

3. plant the 18' wide area next to the fence in the lower part of the yard, ditto everything above except there is no culvert to contend with.  From last summer--

4. replace two sickly Autumn Twist azalea when they come up for sale. The new ones look fine

5. Figure out what to put under and around the white dogwood in the front bed. Dwarf Cherry Laurel? I shovel pruned the experimental gardenia that was there. It did not like our winter.

The nursing home in my back yard replanted their row of Green Giant in the one foot strip between paving and a steep drop, and for the third time (yes, third) in what, two years I guess, have lost most of them. You can see them struggling last summer in the picture above. They put some firs between us on the slope when I pitched a snit, and those came through fine, and the pines at the base are okay.  The person in charge of the landscape was astonished and angered that I didn't believe in the Green Giant solution as they were replanted a third time. He accused me of not having faith.  I suppose I should start jumping up and down again but at this point I am more amused than anything.