Garden Facelift: a plan
In landscape design, that is.
Choosing a landscape designer might be like choosing a hairdresser. This could be a long-term relationships so it should be someone you can communicate with, someone who "gets" you and, most important, someone who cuts your hair the way you like it.
I asked Nancy and Pierre Moitrier, of Designs for Greener Gardens of Annapolis, to help me.
I have worked with Nancy and Pierre on gardening articles for The Sun before. And, more important, I have visited their garden and it looks like a garden I would like: not at all formal, something fun to see everywhere you look but with an overall design that is very pleasing, very welcoming.
Nancy took my measure during a tour of my gardens, and her plans for my front bed relect her understanding of who I am -- as a gardener, anyway.
She has created a design that uses the three euonymous shrubs and the three rose bushes that are already there, saving me money and doing a little something for the environment.
She found a couple of other plants -- Siberian iris and a hellianthus -- that she will move from elsewhere in the yard, and she found a spot for the weigela "Merlot" that came free in the mail -- requiring a minimum of new purchases.
When it is done, the foundation bed will have the eclectic quality of my shade and sun gardens -- I haven't met a plant I didn't have a spot for -- but it will have the hint of formality that a front bed should have.
And it will have some fun additions that I will love: baptisia australis "Blue False Indigo), an agastache in some brilliant color to be decided and Asclepias tuberosa "Butterfly weed."
I am a little bit nervous about the dwarf specimen conifer near the porch, but that's just me. I am not a huge conifer lover, but I am sure Nancy will find something I like and I trust her eye.
Now the hard part: waiting for the team to arrive and for the facelift to begin.
