Flower Bed Advice

Start with some spray paint and lay out the flower bed, dig out the grass, put in a boarder to keep out the grass, bring in bulk soil and fill in the bed, plant then mulch. Don't worry about the plants yet get the back breaking work done, plants will come in time.

Outline your bed, add some curves, spray with roundup, wait a week, dig the dead grass OuT, till the dirt, add some garden soil and till, build up bed about 12 inches, add some easy shrubs like indian Hawthorne, witch hazel, with a taller item like a sweet olive, add mulch

quote:

---

Outline your bed, add some curves, spray with roundup, wait a week, dig the dead grass OuT, till the dirt, add some garden soil and till, build up bed about 12 inches, add some easy shrubs like indian Hawthorne, witch hazel, with a taller item like a sweet olive, add mulch

---

That's what I was looking for. The bed is already outlined, hard to tell in the pics, but it does need to be redone.

The plants can be laid quickly in loose soil, if you have a truck go to a nursery and get bulk garden soil. Mound the soil to make a little hill. Take a picture of your layout and ask for recommendations at the nursery. Something evergreen like and Indian hawthorn might be a good choice. It is just a short shrub that stays green year round. Make the beds decent size mulch heavy to prevent weeds IMHO It looks good to have a good bit of mulch showing

I like the spray paint idea, but man...put some curves in it, and make it a little bigger. Remember, plants get bigger, so leave space between. What I would do in that second picture is this:

Starting at that left corner of the porch, I'd walk out diagonally about 10' and paint a spot. Then I'd walk to the house about 6' to the left of the porch, and put another spot. Then I'd walk over about 5' in front of that 'bush' on the left and put another spot. Then I'd walk over to the sidewalk about 9' from the porch and put another spot. Then, using sweeping curves, I'd play connect the dots with the paint. THEN I'd round up everything INSIDE the paint, let it die, then dig it out. Get some soil mix and raise it up a bit, then plant Indian Hawthorne (white) about 3-4' apart in front of the porch. If you connect the dots properly, you should have room for a Crepe Myrtle off the corner of the porch. Plant it closer to the yard than the porch. Use the space around it to plant Aztec Grass or Varigated Liriope. You'd have room at the sidewalk to leave an area for 'color' that could be replaced every spring and fall...stuff like petunias or whatever flowers your wife wants.

You won't ever have to do anything to this bed except MAYBE trim the Crepe Myrtle every January/February to keep it looking like a tree. Keep the 'suckers' off the trunk.

For a nominal fee, I'd be willing to take a road trip with a trailer load of all of the above and install it for you. Want irrigation and lighting too?

quote:

---

Now I got to find someone with a tiller.

---

You can rent a tiller at Home Depot.

We just dug everything up when we made ours, we didn't spray anything first.

quote:

---

I know a lot of people don't do it, but put landscape fabric down. It will really help prevent weeds and cut down on maintenance.

---

I can't stand the stuff, because most weeds come from above via seeds. However, in this case with not killing the existing weeds/grass, I'd agree with putting it down.

Also love the lorapetalums. Not crazy about the firepower nandinas, but they do provide color without annuals. Same with lorapetalums. Lorapetalums go VERY well together with ornamental grasses like aztec or varigated liriope.