Front Yard Gardening

Since moving into our new house a year and a half ago, we've slowly been working away at unpacking and decorating. It takes a long time (and money!) to get things as we would like them. Since we've had some absolutely beautiful weather outside lately and it is the prime season to do some gardening, I picked out some perennials and flowers for the front yard that will hopefully grow nicely throughout the summer and years to come!

Our front yard tends to get sun in the morning and becomes more shady as the day goes on. This means that our backyard gets plenty of hot afternoon sun and our front yard gets quite a bit of sunlight, but gets mostly shaded in the afternoon.

We also already had some plants in our front yard, including the trees and shrubs, one peony and two clematis. The clematis that are fully grown and climbing all over the place are the ones that were previously there.

 This third clematis we planted last year and thankfully, it survived and looks like it will bloom soon! Unfortunately, the fourth clematis that we also planted last year didn't make it, so we planted one in its place. I read that clematis like to have their roots shaded, so I planted a hosta in front of each of the newer ones that will hopefully provide shade and beautiful greenery. I'm hoping that the front yard isn't too sunny for the hostas as they do like the shade...but hopefully it gets shady enough in the afternoon to keep them happy. I also planted a daylily beside the clematis - the daylily is "Hemerocallis 'Purple Water'". The hosta is called "June".

Here is the new clematis that we planted called "The President" and will have beautiful deep purple flowers. The hosta in front is called "hosta undulata 'Variegata'" with elegant variegated leaves. The daylily beside the clematis is called "Prairie Blue Eyes" and will have lighter purple flowers with yellow inside them.

Beside the fully grown clematis, we planted a "Blue Butterfly Delphinium". This was an impulse purchase at the garden center - when I saw those beautiful flowers, I couldn't resist buying it!

Those plants are all along the left wall of the walkway. Now, I'll show you what is planted on the right side, between those two shrubs.

Here you can see the peony in the back that was already planted when we moved in. It bloomed last year and it was absolutely gorgeous - giant pink flowers! It is too bad that peony flowers don't bloom all year long and only last a short while. I planted "Echinacea purpurea" or "Cornflower 'Magnus'" in front of this peony plant because it blooms later in July/August. Now, we will have flowers blooming at different times throughout the spring and summer months.

In the next flower bed to the right, I planted another peony plant in the back, "Paeonia lactiflora 'Longfellow'". This peony will grow large crimson flowers that will hopefully bloom in the next month or so. In front of the peony is a Black-eyed Susan, "Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii 'Goldsturm'". This will bloom later in the summer in July/August with beautiful yellow flowers similar to daisies.

I'm very happy that we finally have some more plants in the front yard so it doesn't look quite so barre anymore. We still have to plant a big tree in the middle of the lawn, as well as another smaller tree closer to the house. We also have some more cleaning to do in the front yard as I dug up some random black wires, and I have no idea where they go or what they do....but I want to wait until Paul's Dad comes over to help us as I would prefer not to get electrocuted. I can't wait until everything grows larger and the flowers bloom!