Canadian Gardening: Welcome to storybookmum from Windsor Ontario, 1 by storybookmum

storybookmum wrote:
Oh, my goodness! Thank you all for the welcome!

My garden isn't mine for another 15 days. We've bought a new house that we get on April 15th. When I get there, I have a lot with three island beds in the front yard along with a small pond. In the back yard there are three beds, I think, up against fence and windows, and a huge pond (more of a fountain, it's lifeless and chlorinated at the moment, a waterfall into a pond). There's also an above-ground pool with a deck around it.

The current owners have done a lot of landscaping. Even the pool has pretty shrubs planted around it.

I'm so very new to gardening, this is all terra incognita for me, but I'm reading and reading and reading and can't wait to get my hands on it. Right now it looks like there are a lot of bones there.....foundational stuff. I don't believe there's much in the way of flowers. It's trees and shrubs and bushes. But I'll have to see.

I know I have the following:

3 serviceberry trees in the back yard. (saplings)
1 red maple in the side yard (very, very small sapling)
1 unknown tree, about 9 feet tall, in the front yard at the sidewalk.
1 corkscrew hazelnut in the front pond area
several small evergreen trees, including one of those ones that twist around in a corkscrew.
A few...."threadleaf" cypress, is that right? threadleaf cedar? not sure, a short, yelllow bush....pic included...

I have a few rosebushes and a lilac bush.

I want to get a few things in there that aren't now. I want to plant a spice bush behind the big pond, I plan to put in an eastern redbud in the front yard. I want to plant some dwarf delphiniums, and some phlox, a lot of perennials. Next year, when I work at getting the pond a natural pond with plants and perhaps fish, I want to plant some flame willow around it.

Other things on my list to explore for the yard (but no giant rush, I keep telling myself) is a nice big strawberry terra cotta container to grow kitchen herbs, a burning bush, some lungwort (high contrast), bleeding heart, a lot of campanula (I was thinking of lining the driveway with campanula - blue waterfall, maybe?), a pink flowering almond, and lots of calla lillies and irises to go around the trees. I have a graded entrance in the back yard to the family room; I could see training some wisteria in there.

Lots of plans! I want to put in some edibles, too, at least some raspberries and strawberries for the kids and I to work on together.

My house brick is a grey with a few pastel colours worked in, so my front yard I was looking at brightening up with blues and pinks and whites. In the back, where the flowers will be resting up against the fence, and out into the yard, I thought I'd make it more bright and colourful with hibiscus and canna and things like that, in lots of reds and oranges and yellows. I have trumpet creeper in an arbour over the pond, I know that....

Some days it seems very exciting, others very overwhelming. I suspect that what they have in there now has been largely planted to be beautiful and relatively low maintenance. They enjoy being outdoors, but they're very busy people, foster parents to a number of special needs children.

I have a lot to learn! I'm looking forward to lots of advice!

I have some pictures of the house from a few weeks ago.....here's a peek at the yard in the front...