Changes in the Yard Plans

I got an email from Home Depot (I thought) last week about a sale on young Maple Trees - so over we went on Sunday to check them out and maybe pick up 2 or 3 for the yard. Home Depot didn't have any Maple Trees though - I might be loosing my mind! - so we browsed through their selection but nothing really caught our eyes.
On a whim, we headed over to Lowe's where we found quite a few things that made us stop and think about the yard plan.

Blossoming Cherry Tree

This would be lovely to replace the dead tree we had to take down in the front of the condo's. It doesn't grow very large and would be a lovely ornamental tree on the front shared lawn. We also looked at some Chinese maple trees, but either way, since this is a condo assoc decision, we decided this would need to wait for a bit.

Maple Tree

This was our original thought. It would still be lovely in the side yard. A wonderful shady tree - but not even Lowe's is carrying them right now - we found an awesome alternative though! See the next one!

Cleveland Flowering Pear Tree

Neither one of us had heard of this tree, but it's a fast growing flowering tree (awesome since we've delayed yard plantings for so long!) that has lovely white flowers in the spring, green leaves all summer that then turn red in the fall! We are thinking bottom of the right side of the driveway to give the edge of the yard a little Umph! and get a bit more shade and color going over there. Depending on how well it takes, I think I could find several other places to put them as well!

Both above and below pictures are American Boxwood.

Matt had me look at these for the yard hedge (we've talked about putting in a living hedge ever since we moved in since we can see our lovely neighbors living room from our deck and they can see our entire back yard, deck and first floor.) instead of doing Forsythia, which was the original plan. Matt said he doesn't really like the yellow and brown 'twiggy' look of the Forsythia when it's not in bloom - which, to be honest, I hadn't thought about. So I thought about it, and I agree, I'd rather have a solid green background. Even better, that once they really grown in, if we want to, we could create more of a hedge look as seen below.

Traditional Rhody

These are also great for creating living hedges. They do take some time to grow, but the flowers are big and bright (come in a few diff colors!) and would fill in nicely as years go by. These do bring another element - bumble bees - and I am NOT a fan of bees, but the big bumble ones are usually ok by me :)

 

While we cannot plant the entire hedge in one year (too many plants = too much $$) we walked the yard and found our priority spot that will be the focus of this years new plants for the hedge. Yay for progress!