The season is winding down. My vegetable garden was cleaned up over a month ago, and I have had little to do gardening wise. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about design, and brainstorming of ways to improve the gardens of houses in my area. I currently rent the upstairs of a house with a much neglected yard. One of the first things that I did when I moved in was evaluated the situation. Here’s the current landscape:

Like much of the landscapes in my yard it has a total of three plant–Kentucky bluegrass, Tam juniper, and a Norway maple. Definite room for improvement. There isn’t a lot of space, but I’m sure I could do better than what’s there.

You can’t see it in this picture, but the maple has been pruned (and not with great care) to make way for traffic going up the side alley, and power lines above. It is a horrible looking tree. The junipers have been neglected, and are out of place. Both the tree and junipers need to go. The lawn has been horribly neglected. Any semblenance of rountine mainteance doesn’t exist for the lawn, besides regular mowing. It needs a dose of lawn weedkiller first, and then reseeding to help the bare spots. To help prevent it from returning to the sad state it is in, it needs better irrigation. But the lawn is too small to serve any useful purpose. I think it should go too.

Now with a bare slate, this small garden can be filed with plants. All of it could be transformed with variety of perennials, dwarf shrubs, ornamental grasses and a small ornamental tree. In many gardens, I think that owners hold on to what is there too long. Getting rid of what’s there and staring over can seem a little daunting, but it can be done in phases. Its much easier to deal with new plants in the right place, than old diseased plants that just don’t fit.