Paul and Heather Shelley are sharing their garden with us today.
We started gardening seriously here over a decade ago. At the beginning, our corner lot was nothing but dirt, as we had bought a newly built house in northern Indiana (Goshen).
We started with major structural plants, trees, and shrubs for privacy around the perimeter of the yard, and now we are in the process of transitioning to a shady yard, as the trees have matured over the last 22 years.
Hard to imagine this started as a completely blank lot! Planting trees and shrubs is always a great way to start a new garden and create a beautiful space as they mature.
The large shrub to the right looks like dappled willow (Salix integra ‘Hakuro Nishiki’, Zones 5–7), which has showy pink-and-white variegated new growth that is so colorful that it almost looks like it is in flower.
Careful plantings of shrubs have created a lot of privacy in the yard, and there’s a beautiful little sitting nook tucked away amid all the greenery.
Catmint (Nepeta × faassenii, Zones 3–8) is a great, long-blooming perennial that produces clouds of small blue flowers in the summer and is resistant to both deer and rabbit damage. The name “catmint” comes from the plant’s close relationship to catnip (Nepeta cataria, Zones 3–9), which is famous for its heady attraction to cats. Catmint has showier flowers and won’t lure every stray cat in your neighborhood.
A diverse selection of shrubs, many evergreen, provides a strong backbone to this garden so it will look good every day of the year.
Crisp lawns provide a tidy border to the increasingly shady garden beds.
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Comments
Nice work guys! Lovely to see conifers and flowering plants :) Looking forward to getting out there again soon. Hopefully the warmer daytime temps will finally melt all the snow we still have here!
What an inspiration. We’re moving to a new house (new build) so it too will be a blank slate. Your creativity is inspiring. Thank you for sharing.
Beautiful & peaceful! Flows so nicely! Love the dappled willow!
Gorgeous! Could you come back & tell us about some of the trees & shrubs?
You've created some wonderful spaces with your trees and shrubs and then filled them with color. Well done.
Oh the importance of trees and shrubs to make a beautiful garden seems to be so often overlooked by so many gardeners.
You've created so much more than just a garden with some perennials...this is a wonderful job of landscape design accented with perennials.
Just gorgeous!
Well done!
You left me wanting to see more photo!
Oh the importance of trees and shrubs to make a beautiful garden seems to be so often overlooked by so many gardeners.
You've created so much more than just a garden with some perennials...this is a wonderful job of landscape design accented with perennials.
Just gorgeous!
Well done!
You left me wanting to see more photos!
Heaven. A true oasis. Very well done indeed! Bravo to you.
You've really created a wonderful garden space - excellent job creating structure that still seems so natural. Love that dappled willow!
Paul and Heather - what a great garden design! I enjoyed looking at all the photos and reading your gardening story.
Your lawn is so healthy looking and I like that narrow peninsula of a bed in the last photo.
Magnificent! The stature of the vertical elements is perfection combined with all of the textures of the horizontal shrubs and perennials. Simply beautiful.
Simply beautiful garden design - shapes and colors! I would love to know what that juniper looking shrub is in the 2nd to last picture. Here's to a glorious spring and new gardening season!
Been so busy I just got to this post today. Well worth waiting for! GREAT job!!! Love it.
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