In need of suggestions

Hi! I'm new here, and very VERY new to the world of gardening. I'm basically lazy when it comes to plants, and I tend to forget to water things pretty frequently (thereby killing everything in my path). So here's my dilemma:

I live in a townhome in central Alabama (I think that's zone 7). My neighbor has recently gone on a landscaping kick, and his yard looks amazing - which, in turn, makes mine look awful. I have a tiny, tiny bed in front of my windows that currently hold about 4 or 5 azalea bushes that came with the house. They look like they're dying, and I've kinda wanted to get rid of them anyway (there's one oddball that's a different color from the rest - bugs me to no end!), so it's about that time.

What can I replace them with that will be (a) attractive (I don't care for little green bushes that don't do anything special) and (b) very low-maintenance? I'm fine with bushes, flowers, or whatever - I just don't want it to be something that I'll have to spend much time on. The bed is probably about 1.5-2 feet deep and 5 feet long.

Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Hi Zelavie, For a start, IF your Azalia's have some colour, then they are not dead, but it sugests you might have a slight acid soil or they would not grow at all, they only flower early spring and normally before the leaves appear, they are lovely shrubs, but if not to your taste, ask the new gardening neighbour if he would like them.
As to what to grow in your new bed in front of your window, AND needs very little attention, dig it over, put in loads of new compost as the soil could be tired after a long spell of nothing, and go to the store/Garden center and have a look at plants, you need Perennials (that is plants that come up every year) but they die down in winter,
To start with I'd go for some spring flowering bulbs like Tulips. Daff's etc so they give you some colour before the others start to sprout into greenery and flowers, as for plants, try Hostas, they come on all shades and colours of leavs, lily's (BULB ) for summer flowering, also perfume if under a window, Phlox all colours, Delphiniums, tall, blue. cream, yellow, deep blue and pinky purple,
Try somethine to grow on the wall for hight, like a Clemetis, you would need a trellis for that but your new gardener might enjoy putting that up for you, choose one that's flowers will be highlighted against the house, you could also use summer bedding for lots and lots of colour, but you need to deadhead those and water almost daily in the growing season, so there are some Ideas to start you off, you could ask the neighbour for advice, nothing like a bit of admiration to win over a NEW gardener, so good luck and have a go, you might find you actualy enjoy it all. WeeNel.

If you live in Alabama, you have acidic soil and the azaleas may be the most carefree plants you could put there. They are probably suffering from the worst drought in history for this area.

How long have you lived there? Do you know what type of azaleas you have? What's the sun/shade like in that spot?

Judy

If you're really that bad about remembering to water, you might consider installing a drip irrigation system--there are really expensive systems out there but you can also get cheap ones where the controller runs off a battery and you can put them together yourself pretty easily. Most home centers stock all the parts you need. Once you have that, you can program it to run as often as you want, and then you don't have to think about it very often and it'll open up the doors to being able to grow more plants than you could otherwise.

Thanks for the suggestions so far!

My house faces east, so this bed gets all of the morning sun, and shade in the afternoon.

I have no idea what kind of azaleas they are - I just know that most of them are white with one pink one off to the side. The flowers are fairly small compared to other azaleas. The reason I think they're dying is that they look like they're rotting from the bottom up. I wish I had a picture - maybe I can upload one tomorrow. They're green on top, but hollowing out on the bottom. They bloomed a little this spring, but not much.

I'm hesitant to spend much money on this, because it's a rental. I only plan to be there another year or two. My landlady doesn't mind me changing up what's planted, but I don't want to invest any significant amount of money in it.

Sedum is something that I'm pretty sure you can't kill. I had it at my house when I moved here, and one year decided it needed thined out. I dug it up, thinned it out, broke most of the tops off, planted them, and threw the broken parts in a brush pile. Two weeks later someone told me that their grandmother called them "Live forevers" because you can't kill them, plant them anywhere, and even take leaves and broken parts of the plant and plant them and get new ones. I had noticed that the broken parts on the brush pile looked like they were still green(two weeks later) so I planted them and had twice as many that spring. I have them in sun, I have them in shade. I never took care of them before, they did fine. Now I may overwater them, and they do fine. if you get some, cut them down in the fall and plant what you cut off...next spring you'll have twice as many and you can do it again in the spring. Oh, they generally bloom in the fall, but the foliage is interesting....

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