Today Christine and I worked on a couple home projects, one of which was a landscaping project.

Several months ago, we hired a company to install brick edging along our fence lines to add some interest to our yard, and to reduce the amount of grass that needs to be mowed.

This in turn was a foundation for installing a wall of privacy trees between our back fence line and our neighbors. Our house was built in a subdivision where the houses weren't stacked like a line of soldiers, but the neighboring subdivision behind us was, which means our back fenceline borders three homes that look directly into our back yard.

The privacy trees, called "arborvitae" were each eight foot tall and installed three feet apart. They should provide some privacy immediately (at ground level) and over the next couple years, provide additional coverage to the first and second stories.

But the part of the landscaping we did today was to fill in the grass between the S curves of the brick edging and the straight line of arborvitae as the backdrop.

We envisioned our landscape as a canvas with a green backdrop (the arborvitae), and selected a few colorful plants, including heathers, kaleidescope abelias, mandinas, azelias, and gardenias. In total, about 30 plants, including compost, for under $500 delivered (from Squak Mt. nursery).

We spaced out the plants to allow for planting of flowers in between, and laid out the plants taking into account the expected growth height and width to fill in the "canvas". Much like sculpture, landscape design (at least this amateur's approach) needs to take into account color, depth, height and width.

So, imagine if you will a base canvas of evergreen privacy trees, with dabs of larger bushes and shrubs, with grasses and heathers at the base along the brick line edge providing a variety of heights, widths and depths of color.

Finally, Christine installed a variety of flower bulbs in between the plants, and now we're waiting for them to bloom. I'll take pictures and post them here once we're done.

Meanwhile, we're also working on our nursery, which meant moving my office today, and tomorrow we start painting... Stay tuned for pics there too.