lately in the garden

We've got another bed transformed, dontcha know. 

From a drooping, grappling mess of a bed, to a peerless bed of form and beauty.

But let's back up a notch. Here's one of the ol' place when we first bought her. No spade had even entered the ground!You can hardly distinguish it as a garden bed--it was filled with horrible decorative stone and a wanting juniper. Then it became a sort of half-way house until the other main garden was built, so we could transfer mature plants with a couple of years of growth, rather than newbies.  Once we replanted the transfers, we laid some sod for an overall sense of "unification" and added more soil to the box, since it had started to settle after a long winter.  The conundrum was what to put in the thing. I tend to balk at a rectangular bed, since curves are much more natural to work with. We agreed on the hard-to-grow Japanese Maple for the colour and shape and fine texture of the leaves. I found it contrasted nicely with the boldness of the blue spruce.   We filled in the base with Andorra Juniper and Japanese Astible. Harrison has added his own grasses towards the front--a great teaching moment. When they grow taller, we can discuss the aesthetic of growing taller items towards the back.