Pacific Northwest Gardening: Plant Combinations, 1 by Murmur

Murmur wrote:
Thanks for the info, Pixy - having met you I can understand how good you would be at this. I'll keep my eyes open for a class nearby, but might take a peek at the book, too. My beliefs are deep-rooted so I don't think I would have any trouble with it, however, I do sure agree with you that a hands on, in-person kind of thing is far superior.

Estreya, I was looking again for plant combos that might be appealing and made sense, but so many of mine are thrown together without a whole lot of planning that I finally decided to share an area that I am very fond of. This is a tiny section of my "Frog Garden" which runs the entire length of my deck (at least 40 feet now - although some of that was extended last year and still is just newspapers and weed screen - much of the entire deck is actually underneath the deck). It's very narrow out of necessity, quite shaded, and when I first built it, I had no idea of what I was going to do with it, I just knew that something was needed to soften the lines of the deck. I started in the Fall with layers of newspapers to kill the grass (and moss - it gets quite soggy at times), then added a bit of compost and a lot of decent topsoil. I don't think I planted anything until the next Spring at which time I just put in some small Hostas and let the ferns which grew naturally under the deck and poked through the latticework do their thing. The next Spring I divided up a couple Astilbes I had - into many, many plants (all little sticks which I didn't think were going to live) but they went wild! I added a couple Jack Frost Brunnera, Japanese Ferns, and more frog statues (I am so into whimsy - it turns some people off, but it's just my leftover childhood love of toys). I also have Sweet Woodruff working its way through, and last year I put pots of Heliotrope and Petunias, etc., here and there. (Boy, don't let me get started chatting about my gardens and how they came to be . . . I don't know when to stop!).