From the Sperry Garden – October, 2007

We built our home on this rural ground 28 years ago. At first we came onto our property through a gate in an old wire fence that was smothered in honeysuckle, poison ivy and other invaders. Once that was gone I was able to get grass established. For the first 8 or 10 years it was bermuda, but eventually I turned to St. Augustine due to the shade. Finally, it became too dark even for the St. Augustine.

We’re planting a lot of groundcover into these two beds. You can already see a large, new planting of Persian ivy that I propagated from my own plants in our back yard. Around the hollies from the ivy I have a large bed of mondograss, also stolen from an overgrown bed tucked into our back yard. The big bed across the drive will be sectioned off into a sunny portion with Andorra junipers, another large area with purple wintercreeper euonymus (I already have several large beds in the same area covered with this handsome plant) and more mondograss. Several areas have been left vacant for low hollies, nandinas and other short shrubs. The green metal edging you see has now been driven almost flush with the soil line. My contention is that edging should not be especially visible.

Good landscapes are never finished. Just about the time that you think you can rest on your cherry laurels, it’s time to gut the thing and start over. However, that’s what gives us push to the next gardening day. There’s always a way to make a good garden better.