Pacific Northwest Gardening: Planting a shrub border, 1 by bonehead

bonehead wrote:
Definitely pay attention to their mature size -- I have been working on a shrub border on and off for years, and have found many were planted too closely (a common problem I have). I have not particularly planned for this - just pick up inexpensive shrubs whenever I go to a nursery and pop it in. Lose many to my husband's weedwacking, and more to insufficient water the first year (this border is not handy to any hose so they are pretty much on their own). Here it is in the fall, my favorite time. Now that we have no animals, I plan to add to it inside the field as well, kind of randomly, to break up the straight line look of it. This borders our driveway and is usually very weedy and unkempt (much like the photo). This spring I underplanted most of the shrubs with vinca, hoping that will fill in and perhaps crowd out some of the weeds. I also go back and forth with letting each shrub be as tall as they want to, or pruning them to a similar height.