Fall tulipping and widening the driveway

An idea that was planted in my head years ago was widening my driveway with bricks or pavers. I had a garden designer add a row of large cobbles between my and my neighbor’s front yards (mostly to keep stuff in my garden from creeping into their lawn). He suggested that my driveway could be wider, like I didn’t know already.

The problem

Instead of stepping out of a car into a bed of flowers, the extra space, added by bricks leftover from other projects, makes a dramatic difference.

When a car is in the driveway, there is very little space for exiting the car without a car door hitting a neighbor’s fence on one side, and having to nearly step in the garden getting out on the other. Winter exponentially increases the odds of having to exit the car into an an unshoveled pile of snow.

The materials

I’ve been storing a pile of bricks behind the shed for five years – I finally went and counted them. I had just enough to be able to add a few rows of bricks along the entire length of the driveway along the front garden. I did have to buy some patio base, and some sand for the base beneath the bricks.

More than 1,500 bulbs

At about the same time, my tulips arrived! I order each year from Colorblends Wholesale Flowerbulbs. This year, 500 of them:

• 200 French Blend Rose
• 100 Gigantic Star Daffodils
• 100 Best Red-Yellow
• 100 Lipsticks

In addition to these, I dug up the bulbs in my “construction zone”, saved them, then sorted them by type – just to replant them all. Most are purple grape hyacinths (muscari). But there’s a good number of allium, tulips of different sorts, and a few hyacinths. I spent a lot on these over the years so I wasn’t about to trash or compost them. The muscari multiply each year, unlike the tulips which either disappear or diminish each year. All told, I probably had more than 1,000 bulbs dug up, most the muscari.

• 

  The sorting of the bulbs dug up from where the bricks got laid. Oh look! My book got in this shot. How did that happen? Order yours today!

• 

  The Colorblends bulbs are here! The Colorblends bulbs are here! Always exciting. More exciting in the spring.

• 

  500 bulbs from Colorblends. 100 daffodils and 400 other various bulbs from their flower collections.

• 

  Dug-up bulbs to be sorted.

• 

  I divvy up the number of bulbs in the space, throwing them randomly.

• 

  Daffodil bulbs will naturalize – come back every year and spread.

• 

  This strip of the garden gets only daffodils. There’s around 100 (smaller) daff bulbs in there already.

Invasive removal

Looks nice here, but it is the bane of my existence.

It was also my chance to try and rid this area of the invasive chameleon plant (Houittuynia). I hate the stuff. It came attached to some plant given from a friend’s garden. It had taken over that area. It will never be gone, till death do us part. I was able to dig it up as best I can. It had massive amount of loose roots. Any little piece of root left in the ground will grow into new plants next year. Much of the soil dug up from here went straight into the garbage, no re-using or composting.

Plant shopping in other parts of the garden

There was a grand “shuffling of the perennials” from other parts of the garden.

Rather than spending money on new plants for the newly cleared space (we’re on a covid-lack-of-work-based budget here), I moved plants from other areas of the garden – like a Japanese maple that was completely hidden, a low-growing conifer I’d not seen in years, and other plants that were getting too crowded out in their space. I have a habit of planting too much and too tight, so it was pretty easy to take out about every third plant and move them into this area.

Rearranging smarter

And I moved some other plants in this section that were too big or tall for the space, like crocosmia, hibiscus, and monarda, into other ares of the front garden. Nothing in this area along the driveway seemed planned after 20 years. Planting by season, color, and height gave way to chaos over the years.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Front yard garden photos from over the years…

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Tulips in past years…

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•