Empty and weedy!
My client Tony is a busy guy with work, wife and two little boys so he needs my help. And until last week there was a skinny bed full of weeds that really bothered me; it also had two struggling blueberry shrubs in it, and I use the word shrubs loosely.
Personally, I detest this kind of dead space because weeds move in and must be periodically removed. It’s just labour and more labour. But there is an easy solution: plant something!
Plant what?
Now, I used to be very shy about garden bed design because my specialty is garden maintenance. But sometimes you have to stretch yourself to get better. So I went to a big box store and there I found many plants for under $10.
I only considered perennials because I don’t want my clients paying for new annuals every year. Bright yellow/orange flowering daylilies (Hemerocallis ‘Stella d’Oro) looked fine but they will fade at the end of the season. So I picked up two English lavenders (Lavender angustifolia) which will stay after we clip off the spent flowers.
Since Heathers were fairly cheap, I grabbed one. That’s it. All of the plants came to C$90, tax included. That’s definitely doable financially for Tony, and his beautiful wife has something to look at.
I’m hoping the plants will shade out and outcompete many weeds so I can do more interesting work like pruning. Of course, I know that the soil is full of weed seeds but I’m hoping things will improve.
Fight dead space
If you have dead space in your garden then definitely consider planting something. Your garden will look better and weeds will get some competition.
And don’t worry if you’re not a garden designer. Try new things and stretch yourself, like I did. You can always change things if it doesn’t work out.
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