quote:

Well, I managed to kill the periwinkle, so apparently not too hardy for me!

Not talking major excavation…..even a small hand shovel to just scrape away the dirt until you can see what’s below the brick. Should take just a few minutes. The bed is pretty empty so access is easy.

Oh, and I rarely kill plants but I can’t get periwinkle or pachysandra to grow well.

Ajuga is a whole different thing….

quote:

Not talking major excavation…..even a small hand shovel to just scrape away the dirt until you can see what’s below the brick. Should take just a few minutes.

That’s not the part I’m worried about.

What are we supposed to do with what we find.

That’s what I’m worried about.

As a Jesuit friend of mine was fond of saying:

“The plan will be revealed in the fullness of time.”

I didn't mean to make dirt piled up against bricks to be a 911 kind of emergency. Your house isn't going to fall down next week or anything like that. But since the discussion was about what to do in that bed I wanted to throw it out there so you were aware of what the best practices are when it comes to grading near a foundation.

quote:

Originally posted by wtg:
Not talking major excavation…..even a small hand shovel to just scrape away the dirt until you can see what’s below the brick. Should take just a few minutes. The bed is pretty empty so access is easy.

Oh, and I rarely kill plants but I can’t get periwinkle or pachysandra to grow well.

Ajuga is a whole different thing….

Ajuga REPTANS? the second part of the name definitely describes what it will do…

Also don’t plant Bishop’s Weed (aegopodium). I’m still trying to get rid of it; it spreads via spaghetti-like roots. Hmmm, same with my Japanese anemone. Too hardy, too much.

Have had good luck with ajuga, especially the reddish brown variety; the green stuff is a little too aggressive. But only in a confined area. It does want to spread but I have found it easy to control or to get rid of, unlike Bishop's Weed which is indestructible.

I have some Japanese anemone under a big silver maple in the backyard. That whole bed is a naturalized jumble of hostas, European ginger, primroses, daffodils and heaven knows what else. The anemone seems to meander around but again, it's not crowding anything else out and I haven't had trouble keeping it where I want it.

We have ajuga reptans in about 1/4 of the lawn. I just mow over it. When it's left to grow, the flowers are pretty.

I got some nasty weed several years ago. If it gets to flower, the seeds go everywhere. The base of the plant has a clump of long, feathery leaves that grow vertically. It puts out underground runners an inch or so below the surface which are bright yellow and are like rubber bands. If you pull one plant out, the runner stretches a couple inches, then breaks and snaps back into the ground. You couldn't design a better invasive weed.

At one point, I dug out an area about 10 feet by 20 feet -- by hand -- to pull out all the roots and runners. It just comes back.

i just scanned the other replies, so don't be mad if i just repeat what others said, but here is what i would do if this was my house.

first of all, please get rid of all the bricks, cinderblocks, cement edging. that is the ugliest part of what you have there.

second, if you are concerned about drainage, gently slope the entire area so that the tree is at the center of a gentle mound. then dig a narrow trench between the lawn and the planted area in question, and between the area and the pavement. basically, create a narrow moat, using an edger, around the entire planted area (but not next to the foundation. you want the ground adjacent to the foundation to be your highest point.

so now you have a nice, gradually sloped mound.

I will fill the entire thing with lovely spring bulbs, like tulips, daffodils, and crocus, and maybe ring the area with a band of lily of the valley.

then you have two options: low maintenance or higher maintenance.

low maintenance is a perennial ground cover like periwinkle or hostas.

higher maintenance is an annual like impatiens (though perhaps it is a perennial where you live?) impatiens spreads out nicely and and blooms continuously for a long season. you can get it in many different colors.

another option to do yearly is after the bulbs are spent, scatter annual seeds like cosmos and zinnias and other everblooming annual flowers and let them come up atop the bulbs. you'll have cut flowers all season.

whichever method you choose, i would mulch heavily with soil pep. soil pep is decomposed bark. it not only serves well as a mulch, it adds nutrition to the soil. every spring i buy a dozen bags of soil pep, and i use it everywhere.

lastly, keep a bare area that is just mulch around that dogwood tree. trees don't like competition. you can fashion a well around the tree to fill with water in the dry season.

forget gravel. it is ugly and gets filled with weeds easily, and gets scattered everywhere.

Thanks pique! We have written off pebbles/gravel for sure. Beyond that, nothing else is decided.


Well, except I think we should stay low-ish maintenance, so maybe hostas for starters.

We also still haven't decided whether to get rid of the monkey grass or re-hab it.

Also, the ground is sloped right now, so I think we're good in that regard.

Oh and what looks like lawn to the right of the blocks, that's actually clover or something, it's supposed to be part of the flower bed but run-off has brought seeds, which stopped at the blocks...

We need to take a trip to a HD or Lowes and look at rocks and decide what we can replace those blocks with. Mr. SK said he wants to keep a barrier there, but that it doesn't have to be that tall, so maybe we can do natural looking rocks of the same time, and then with plantings, it won't be noticeable...

We dunno yet.

No rocks. Use the ditch around the bed as your barrier because that way, when the weeds try to encroach you can just refresh the ditch. If you put rocks there you are giving the weeds a place to organize their nefarious attack on your flower bed.

quote:

Use the ditch around the bed as your barrier

We can call the ditch concept Pique’s mini-swale…

Look at mortarless stack blocks. Very attractive, easy to install, very sturdy. I’ve seen 20 foot retaining walls made out of the stuff and it’s porous at the joints.

They’re popular here because proper block walls require massive footings below the frost line to avoid frost heave.