Garden Planning

We have a small watershed grant that we've gotten to redo the yard at Winter Street (where Patrick's dad lives) — and truth be told, it could hardly be *less* pleasant...

We paid our amazing yard guy to clean it out, and he did an amazing job, so now we have a blank slate:

With the amount of the grant, we could not afford a full garden plan. So I've spent much of the last couple of days doing some garden planning, looking for native plants that can grow in shade, looking at heights, and what blooms at different times, etc. My friend Gibson was nice enough to take me through her neighbor's amazing yard, and commiserate with me on our mutual hatred of orange daylilies.

Then I called Mother Earth Gardens and booked an hour ($80) with one of their experts to come look at it, answer questions, etc., to kind of fill in my ideas. Mary was AMAZING! She was pleasantly surprised at my prep work, so then we could spend our time coming up with some other ideas, sketching out what should go where, etc. She confirmed that the dead tree should go, and some ideas about cutting back some overhangs to add more light. She suggested some planting ideas I had not thought of. And she was just super enthusiastic and friendly and full of support and ideas. It was a great experience!

Which all leads up to the fact that I have a TON of planting I need to do in the next couple of weeks, so if you are splitting things (and don't have jumping worms), please think of me, especially for shade loving native plants!