Today we’re in Lake Bluff, Illinois, visiting Nicki Snoblin’s garden.
This year I decided to dig up about a third of my front yard to make a place for sun-loving, pollinator-friendly perennials. I had many plants in my backyard that were no longer getting the sun they needed as the landscape matured over the years.
I spent the winter mulling it over, drawing up plans that I struggled to make to scale, thinking about plant placement, and then did what I always do: tossed it all out and flew by the seat of my pants, so to speak.
In April I laid out a rope, adjusted it until I liked the shape, then dug the edge. My husband rototilled it—twice—and then we spent many hours picking out the remaining clods of grass and clay. I amended the soil as best I could with many bags of composted manure and mushroom compost, and then, as I planted, I added compost to the fill dirt.
I wanted several flagstone paths in the garden to make it easier to tend and also for the delivery people who sometimes prefer to take a shortcut to my front door. I laid the paths out first with sheets of cardboard and then purchased flagstones.
I like a little whimsy (OK, a lot of whimsy) in my gardens, so I put in a traffic roundabout surrounding an as-yet-unknown focal point.
Spoiler alert! The focal point turned out to be a tuteur/trellis with a charming Clematis ‘Rooguchi’ (Zones 4–8).
Next I started moving in plants from elsewhere in my gardens: coneflowers (Echinacea, Zones 4–8), turtlehead (Chelone obliqua, Zones 5–9), black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta, Zones 3–7), native spiderwort (Tradescantia occidentalis, Zones 3–9), bee balm (Monarda), catmint (Nepeta, Zones 3–8), Penstemon, anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum, Zones 4–8), and more. I also shifted several of the existing plants to blur the line from the old border. Part of the new bed is fairly shady, so I moved in several hostas and ligularia from other beds.
I needed to keep the cost down, so at this point only about a third of the plants in the bed were purchased, among them this sea holly (Eryngium ‘Big Blue’, Zones 4–9). I also tucked in a few annuals for instant color.
The bed as it looked in early June
My plan now is to wait a year and see how things fill in. Since I planted many things in ones (instead of the typically recommended threes or fives), I may need to divide them to create drifts instead of spots. Meanwhile, my neighbors keep telling me it’s beautiful—perhaps in contrast to the bare dirt they were looking at for several weeks!
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Comments
I applaud your gusto, what a great idea in making this project come to life. It will be wonderful to see it in the future. Please post again and soon! Well done.
Thank you! Here’s a July photo.
What a transformation!!! I’m glad you took before pics and shared them with us! It looks so inviting. If I lived in your neighborhood I’d have to take a walk on your pathways to admire the plantings!
Thanks!
Looks like you are off to a very good start. I love your choice for the round about focal plant.
What a great idea to plot the flagstone placement with cardboard! Can't wait to see this next season - it's just going to be better and better.
Great job! You should post each year at this time so we can all see how it fills in.
It is going to look great. I appreciate the effort you have put in; I am revamping some beds and I know it is hard work to dig existing plants and move to new areas. Thanks for the narrative of the steps you have taken. I intend to use your idea of laying out cardboard "flagstones" - I need to make a path through a large bed for the pest control guy to use when checking the termite bait stations.
Bed
I had a lot of cardboard on hand because we were doing a DIY kitchen remodel at the same time, which left us with dozens of boxes. It came in handy!
Nice work! And smart to put flagstone in at this stage, I wish I'd thought ahead like that with my flagstone!
Pretty and you will have years of enjoyment!
Great Job!!!! I LOVE IT!!!
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