Beginner Gardening: Front yard / corner lot needs help for British pocket garden, 0 by Twincol

Twincol wrote:
Hi, all! I am exhausted, fried! I spent the weekend doing Fall cleanup in the backyard and took that little "barrow" WeeNel spoke of and moved my concrete pots to the front yard. I had to use it for the little rose bushes as well [sigh]. But what I managed to get done was 1) plant the Star Jasmine at the fence entry to the front door and 2) plant the little rose bushes in the concrete pots. Hmmmm, why? Well, I figured they would both benefit from the larger space and the Star Jasmine would most especially, as I hope that it will "hit the ground running" come Spring. That'd give us a head start come Spring and I've already decided that at least the first two posts on each side of the walkway will be covered in Star Jasmine. The rose? Well, it simply provides encouragement for continued work.

You will note that the Jasmine appears to nearly cover the front beds at the house walls, which is kinda cool. The Wax Leave Privet pom trees will lose the lower pom and be surrounded by a pot surround, thus providing a little color interest and contrast behind the concrete pot and Jasmine.

It's fun to have this much accomplished. We also have our annual street-side trash pickup this week, so I managed to move a small bit of yard trash out there. It's actually a bit more than this one person can manage to handle the physical aspects of the work, but it is certainly gratifying.

WeeNel, I took your suggestion and picked-up a Borders book by Penelope Hobhouse through Amazon. I also snagged a copy of her book, "A Book of Gardening: Ideas, Methods, Designs: A Practical Guide," which I thought might be interesting, as well. And if I'm not mistaken I have at least one of the books discussing Gertrude Jekyll's work, but I'm not up to searching about for it right now.

BTW, it was 90 degrees less than 2 weeks ago at this time of day, and it's only 64 degrees at the moment. Whew! Such change in such a short period of time, huh? It was very cool late last night and I turned on the heater (a rooftop dual pack [heat and air conditioning in one unit]) only to find it not working. I am remaining positive -- the pilot light is out and PGE can light it this week. We don't want anything else to be wrong with this 32YO unit, do we? Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Well, I'm off to rinse some of the dirt off me. Happy new work week, all!

Linda