What Would You Do With This Garden Space?

The benefit of having a gardening blog is soon you have a virtual world of like-minded, garden-minded generous souls who freely offer their opinions when you ask for them. Okay, I asked! My previous post about the shrubs I cut back has been out there for just a few hours and already the vote is 6 - 0, remove the shrubs or transplant them elsewhere, with one person abstaining.

I knew after I cut back the spiraea that I had opened up an area that has a lot of possibilities. I knew that I should just finish those shrubs off, and everyone, so far, has confirmed that.

Since several gardeners have also offered some ideas on what to do with this space, I thought I would post two more pictures to show the space from different angles to get some more ideas.

This is the view from the street. (See how tall the grass is? Don't talk about it! My mower is still at the shop, though when I called late this afternoon they gave me a glimmer of hope by telling me that mine is in the group they are working on now. Oh, please, lawn mower tuner uppers, please have mine done tomorrow. I'll pay double! Regardless of whether or not I get my mower tomorrow, I am going to trim everything and ACT like I'm getting ready to mow.)

Anyway, back to the view from the street. This area is open to the west and south. The garage wall faces west, the porch faces south, but the crabapple shades it some. Along the wall, there are several Fothergilla gardenii. You can't really see them in the picture, because they are just bare branches right now, but they are keepers. White "bottle brush" blooms in the spring, great fall color, dwarf, NEVER need trimming.

Also on that wall are two of three trellises that I tried to grow clematis on. One of the trellises fell down and is in the garage. I am ready to replace them and put something up there that is a little showier, a lot nicer. And the clematis never did that well. They tried to grow away from the wall probably due to the heat radiating off the brick and always got tangled up in the Fothergilla.


This is the view from the front step. In the center is a crabapple, Malus 'Guinzam', Guinevere Crab. Another keeper. Excellent spring bloom in late April. And then up by the porch are three Bird's Nest Spruce, Picea abies 'Pumila'. I think they should stay, too.

The rest of the plants... daffodils, a few tulips, some lily turf along the side walk, along with some sedum, and some daylilies by the Fothergilla are quite moveable.

So, there you have it. What would you do with this garden space?

(The picture of the pansies and violas doesn't really relate to the topic of this post, I just thought they were pretty, and a garden blog should have pretty pictures, especially when one is showing a garden space in need of renovation!)