Canadian Gardening: My garden in town (Ottawa), 0 by andycdn

andycdn wrote:
When the development was being landscapped, I got the backhoe guy to bring me boulders from the excavation and dump them in my space before everything was closed in. I picked each one and then had to arrange them. They thought I was a little crazy, but I could never have done it after everything was closed in.

I've planted a few trees: a cut-leaf weeping caragana and an Italian prune plum, which I've trained as an espalier. These give some height. For perennials, I have a hosta, a heuchera, and some thalictrum which I'll be replacing. I also brought in a few ferns from the cottage: a maidenhair, which luckily had a trillium in the midst of its rootball; a Christmas fern, which has already sprouted two offshoots, and a Royal fern, which I put in last fall and have high hopes for.

The rest of the space is mostly annuals for now, as I continue to find new things to put in. This past year's colour palette was pink and white, and the bluish hosta worked well with that, as did the dark heuchera.