The front yard still looks a little bleak to me. There used to be two maple trees that more than filled up the space of the island bed. There’s more planting planned and I think the stone edge needs to be extended.

A bit of work still unfinished.

The front entrance bed is mainly a sedum – Iris garden with some brown-eyed susans thrown in for some later color. I chose to use Sedum here to keep the main planting low to keep the walkway and front of the house open. The iris in the bed are ‘minature’ and the ‘little bush’ is a Sedum – ?, it’s similar in form to Autumn Joy but the leaves are variegated green and yellow/cream. The big shrub to the left is a well established azalea and all that remains of the too high shrubs that used to grow along the front entrance.

Around the garage side the moist clay and shade were ideal for Astilbe. I never miss a chance to plant them. Astilbe are one of my top favorite perennials. They do need some direct sun and the soil should remain moist.

Once past the end of the garage there’s plenty of light. Ajuga emerges from the shady area under the hydranga. More sedum and iris grow at the edge of the bed among the rocks. Coreopsis ‘Zagreb” leads into phlox which in turn leads into Hydranga “Limelight’. Behind them all and growing along the deck is a perennial sunflower, the name long forgotten.

Looking to the back of the property line there is another island bed. Again more rock, Sedum and Iris replacing a dead tree.

I skipped showing the side bed but you can catch a glimpse of it while looking at the back of the house.

The long view along the back property line. I normally don’t add little bumps and curves for no good reason to garden borders but sometimes going straight too long gets boring.

It’s always nice being able to blame some idiot for dropping something in the way. This rock was meant to be set back farther but once it hit the ground it got stuck. Weighing in at over 1400 lbs the boulder was at the limit of my weight class and I was tired of wrestling it.

Large stone slabs lead from the deck to the gazebo.

The sun and shade was too much for my camera. This is what the stone slab steps looked like today.

The camera does better on an overcast day.

Of course a good garden takes a lot of TLC. Betty and her Donkey have certainly taken good care of ‘my’ garden. I consider this one of Canton’s top 10 gardens. Now that I’ve said that, I need to come up with 9 more.