Bye Bye Boxwood!
From initial meeting to cleanup to garden bed preparation to transplanting...for me, garden-making is relatively straightforward. After doing this for 15 years, I have a good idea of what plants "work" based on the site realities, client preferences and, not unimportantly, budget constraints. I thought there would be few, if any, obstacles from start to finish with this Riverdale, Toronto garden renovation. Easy peasy, as it were.
I assumed that the soil in the rectangular garden bed would be easy to dig into, making transplanting not painful and maybe even fun. It wasn't meant to be, of course. I started to dig a few preliminary holes and sure enough, I was hitting lots of surface roots from a spruce tree nearby. There was also a decent patch of lily of the valley to contend with.
So much for easy peasy...
Finally, I could put this old and unpruned boxwood out of its misery:
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| Riverdale Backyard Garden Makeover Before |
What does a boxwood look like if it's ignored for many years? As the picture above shows, not very nice. This broadleaf evergreen hardly qualifies as a specimen unless it's clipped into a topiary (and regularly clipped). But this is what draws your eyes when looking down the path to the parking area and from the deck: a diseased and, well, ugly boxwood. A perfect focal point in the garden, for all the wrong reasons.
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| Riverdale Backyard Garden Makeover Before |
The above view towards the deck and back of the house isn't much more inspiring. A half-alive euonymus/winter creeper and a shrub next to the deck is about it for visual interest.
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| Toronto Riverdale Backyard Garden Makeover Before |
There's also this small bed on the other side of the stairs. In part/full shade for most of the day, the peony on the right side will never thrive so out it comes.
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| Toronto Riverdale Backyard Garden Makeover Before |
Here's the view from the top of the stairs and the deck looking down. Sorry that it's a bit out of focus but you see the general picture.
And afterwards...
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| Riverdale Backyard Garden Makeover After |
Above is the view looking down the back half of the bed towards the gate and parking area. I replaced the decrepit boxwood with a fresh Serviceberry, placed a row of dogwood shrubs along the horizontal fence and planted an assortment of shade tolerant perennials like ferns, hostas and Japanese Forest Grass.
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| Riverdale Backyard Garden Makeover After |
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| Toronto Riverdale Backyard Garden Makeover After |
This small serviceberry should get to 15-20 feet tall if all things go well.
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| Riverdale New Backyard Garden Makeover After |
When the homeowners open the gate after parking the car, they'll see a mass of perennials and shrubs as they walk into the house. New transplants always look puny and underwhelming so let's be charitable and give them a few years to get established and really fill in.
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| Toronto Riverdale Backyard Garden Makeover After |
Looking down about 6 feet from the deck railing. I misjudged the number of Hakone grasses as we're about two short in order to fully form a border next to the interlocking brick path.
The grasses can be planted anytime, easy peasy.
