What We Planted and Why

We planted one lonely Double Knock Out shrub rose.  We hoped to plant a half dozen of these wonderful plants, but the Garden Center was down to it's last one.  The Double Knock Out shrub rose is a fantastic new rose, known for it's toughness, and blooms that last all summer long.  We will have to wait until July to buy the rest of our Knock Outs.

We planted three Dwarf Korean Lilacs on the Southeast corner of the house.  Despite their short blooming season, these plants are a favorite of mine.  They are already perfuming the air with their blossoms.

We hemmed the lilacs in with a semi-circle of Many Happy Returns Day Lilys.  I am not a big fan of Day Lilys as they are just planted everywhere, but it is hard to beat this tough low maintenance plant, plus they have large yellow blooms all summer.

The Southwest corner of our house was planted out with three Snowbelle Mock Oranges.  I don't know much about this particular shrub, but it has the sweetest bell shaped flowers. 

 

We planted two Polka Weigela.  (pronounced wuh-jeel-ya).  I think they look like a bunch of fake plastic flowers stuck in the ground.  Evidently they bloom all summer which means we will have a shrub that looks like a big pick of fake flowers crouching by our air conditioner all summer long.

On the Northwest corner we planted a Compact Burning Bush.  The "compact" part is certainly true at this point, but the whole "burning" thing has me baffled.

We planted SIX hydrangeas!  

I have to tell you that when I saw that the landscape architect had placed hydrangeas around my house, I was a little nervous. 

"Aren't they a tricky plant to maintain?"  I asked him shakily.

"No... not really" he replied.

"But Martha Stewart is constantly talking about hydrangeas, and whatever she loves tends to be impossibly complicated!"  I cried out in fear.

"Um... well... the hydrangeas that I put on your plan are actually very hardy, and should do just fine."  he assured me.

I took his word for it and I am terribly excited about our hydrangeas.  Having them in my yard makes me feel very sophisticated and complicated like such a serious gardener.  The hydrangea in the picture above is a  "Annabelle" Hydrangea.  The Annabelle has white blooms that can be as large as ten inches across! 

 

Holy Crap!

   

We also planted some Penny Mac Hydrangeas on the front of the house.  The Penny Macs have blue or pink blossoms depending on what type of soil they are planted in.  For blue blooms you may have to add aluminum sulphate.  Did I seriously just type that last sentence?  What am I going to say next?  Something about alkaline versus acidity?  

Finally, we planted this here Emerald Triumph Viburnum on the Northeast corner of the house.  The strange thing about the Emerald Triumph Viburnum, was it's cost.  It was twice as much as every other plant we bought. I am very curious to see if this plant lives up to it's designer label price.  

We have lots more plants to get, but this was enough for one day for us!