The White Thumb

Mmmmmk friends. Heres the deal, my husband and I bought a beautiful 30 year old home and its garden beds were pretty well established and quite lovely to be honest but let me tell ya it just wasn’t “me”. So in that sense we were pretty lucky that we weren’t starting from scratch but maybe looking at it from a different perspective sometimes it might be nice to completely start from square 1. There were also extremely old hedges and other mature plants that either needed removed or cleaned up. Regardless of what your starting place is, the first step is always to take a step back, and look at what needs clean up.

Step # 1- Take a step back and clean up

Dying mature hedges. This one was hard. The rest of them looked decent but just 1 or 2 from each area were dying. There is also a tree next to the first arrow that wasn’t working for us and to the far right, those over grown bushes that just weren’t that pretty. Now my husband and I knew our plan! We would hire a tree company for the trees that needed trimmed/cut down, and a buddy of ours that does landscaping to tear out all the bushes. We tried to do a couple ourselves and we just decided to hire someone based on the difficulty. We waited until fall of 2022 and we bought the house in 2021, so be patient and enjoy the next step!

Step # 2- Gather inspiration & Dream of the future!

This is one of the best parts. I love day dreaming about how adorable our house could be. Many people pull inspiration from the internet which is wonderful and I had to use it a LOT for research on kinds/zones blah blah blah. BUT my absolute favorite way to gather information was by walking around our neighborhood/town and looking at local houses. This way you don’t even need to look up zones and what seasons they bloom. You can just see it with your own eyes. Now of course if you’re a beginner you may love a plant, but not know what it is. Luckily there are apps out there to help identify the plant for you. I personally use PictureThis. This helped me tremendously! Not just by identifying the plants, but it also identifies other things which you can see below. Once my husband and I knew what larger perennials we wanted I was able to save them to “My garden” in the app for when the time was right to purchase.

Step # 3- Mentally building your garden foundation!

I am a very process oriented planning type of a person, so here is what helped me. We knew when we removed those larger shrubs/trees we were going to replace them with something else. But what? New shrubs and trees? Like I said earlier the garden just wasn’t “me” but I also wanted something low maintenance and I would prefer a cozy cottage look even though our house is far from a cottage. So after we had those hedges pulled it was time to make a decision with all of the inspiration we gathered. We looked at the plants that we liked and picked where we think they would look/do best. Then we researched how far apart they needed to be to create the look we were going for and this ultimately helped us figure out how many we needed to buy. These large low maintenance perennials would be the foundation of our future cozy garden and I was so excited! From there the possibilities were endless and I could make it as wild or as organized as I want!

Step # 4- When to purchase shrubs and other large plants

Okey dokey! It is time to turn your dreams into reality which is sooooo exciting. The same friend we hired to remove our large plants we also hired to plant the new ones. This was fun because I was still considered the artist! I got to research and choose the plants I wanted and for what areas. This was also a gamble ahhh! We were spending a decent amount of money and at this point I was just crossing my fingers and hoping my research and my inspo walks worked! I mean, you really don’t know how well things will look or work until they are in the ground unless you’re a landscape architect which I am not. We are in hardiness zone 6, so the best time to plant is in the fall before the ground freezes, and that is what we did! Come to find out plants are usually 50% OFF during that time HOLYYYY COW! Fall planting is actually good for the plants, the soil retains more moisture during that time, there’s less wind which reduces the moisture etc. and you know what that means? Less watering. So we bought alllll of our plants for a much lower price then if we would have bought them in season and let me tell ya… it’s worth it. Now we just needed to plant them or have our friend plant them that is!

Step # 5- New plants have been planted… now what?

New plants in the ground, plants in the ground, actin like a fool with your plants in the ground! I’m referencing “Pants on the ground” if you do not know this, look it up haha! Anywho, now that your plants are in the ground then next thing you ask yourself is “Okay, now what?”. Well friends, hopefully you did some decent research prior to buying the plants, but the internet is always here for you! You can either use your “PictureThis” app and go to my garden and it will tell you what to do, or you can google! I did both, because I wanted to make sure I was very clear on what kind of plants I had (which I will reveal below) and how to care for them before winter and in the early spring! So here is what I needed: Fresh mulch and fertilizer! Mulch at the base helps protect those newly planted roots over the cold harsh winters depending on where you live. Fertilizer at the base will be there in the spring as fuel when they start to wake from their long wintery slumber. This helped us for sure or we were just lucky all of our plants survived! Let me show you what we chose and how they came back!

Red- Tore out a tree and haven’t decided what to replace it with just yet!

Blue- Gold Thread Cypress

Green- Inkberry Holly

Orange- Lime Ricky Hydrangea

Yellow- Common Boxwood

We are mid summer now and our Hydrangeas are doing great. In a later post I will explain how to take care of these lovely plants and what has worked for us.

Hope you all enjoyed the 5 steps my husband and I followed. I really would love if this helps anyone trying to figure out where to start. It is a long process so be patient! It only gets better.

Happy Gardening!