Nicki’s New Garden Project

Creating a new garden space

Today we ’re in Lake Bluff , Illinois , visiting Nicki Snoblin ’s garden .

This year I decided to savvy up about a third of my front curtilage to make a place for sun - bonk , pollinator - friendlyperennials . I had many plants in my backyard that were no longer getting the sun they needed as the landscape painting matured over the years .

I spent the winter mulling it over , absorb up design that I struggled to make to scale , consider aboutplant arrangement , and then did what I always do : tossed it all out and flew by the seat of my pants , so to speak .

InAprilI laid out a rope , adjust it until I like the material body , then dug theedge . My hubby rototilled it — twice — and then we spent many hours picking out the remaining clods of grass and corpse . Iamended the soilas best I could with many bags of compostedmanureand mushroomcompost , and then , as I planted , I added compost to the fill dirt .

I wanted several flagstonepathsin the garden to make it easier to tend and also for the delivery people who sometimes opt to take a shortcut to my front door . I laid the paths out first with canvass of composition board and then purchased flagstones .

I like a picayune whimsy ( OK , a batch of capriciousness ) in my gardens , so I put in a traffic whirligig besiege an as - yet - unknownfocal point .

Spoiler alert ! The focal pointedness turn out to be a tuteur / trelliswith a charmingClematis‘Rooguchi ’ ( zone 4–8 ) .

Next I start move in plants from elsewhere in my gardens : coneflowers(Echinacea , Zones 4–8 ) , turtlehead(Cheloneobliqua , Zones 5–9 ) , black - eyed Susans(Rudbeckiahirta , zone 3–7 ) , native spiderwort(Tradescantiaoccidentalis , Zones 3–9 ) , bee balm(Monarda),catmint(Nepeta , Zones 3–8),Penstemon , anise plant hyssop(Agastachefoeniculum , Zones 4–8 ) , and more . I also shifted several of the existing plants to obscure the line from the old border . Part of the new bed is middling shady , so I move in severalhostasandligulariafrom other layer .

I needed to keep the cost down , so at this peak only about a third of the plants in the bottom were purchased , among them this ocean holly(Eryngium‘Big Blue ’ , Zones 4–9 ) . I also gather in a fewannualsfor crying color .

The bottom as it look in earlyJune

My programme now is to wait a yr and see how thing fill in . Since I planted many thing in ones ( instead of the typically advocate threes or five ) , I may require to disunite them to make drifts alternatively of spots . Meanwhile , my neighbor keep distinguish me it ’s beautiful — perhaps in contrast to the nude dirt they were looking at for several calendar week !

Have photograph to share ? We ’d love to see your garden , a particular solicitation of flora you love , or a wonderful garden you had the prospect to visit !

To render , station 5 - 10 photos to[email protected]along with some info about the flora in the pictures and where you submit the photos . We ’d love to hear where you are locate , how long you ’ve been gardening , successes you are proud of , loser you learned from , hopes for the futurity , favorite plants , or comical stories from your garden .

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