Painting My Thumb Green

When we first started our backyard project I could easily fall into "themes" for the hardscape shapes, textures and materials, similar to the way I would approach any design project. However, when it came to plants, I was completely clueless. Partly because I am clueless when it comes to plants, but mostly because plants don't play well with my OCD. By their very nature (no pun intended), they are dynamic living things that grow, change and, well, look messy. I like order, symmetry and predictable growth patterns. So if I could design an entire softscape plan that stayed stationary I'd have no problem. Now, tell me to choose a tree that could potentially shed its leaves and berries or grow taller or sideways, and I am completely and utterly indecisive.

This weekend I put my concern aside and we visited a few nurseries as well as Home Depot and Target to start looking at what's out there. I've realized that I have such strong opinions on aesthetics that this may be easier than I thought. Why not take the same approach I have with decorating the house and just pick and choose what we like and deal with placement later? More and more our home is a collection of things that we either like aesthetically or mean something to us sentimentally so why should the garden be any different? This made it much easier to come up with a wish list.

In addition to shopping for larger trees and shrubs for fillers, we stopped by Home Depot with Marcela and Mason to get ideas on which prettier flowers and plants we could pot. They brought us this great ground covering (I've already forgotten what it's called) that immediately inspired me to arrange a low pot full of cactus-looking things. We found this flat pot at Home Depot (it's actually for hoses) and filled it up with cabbage-patchy looking things. I'm hoping to put this on a coffee table or side table somewhere in the back as a centerpiece.

So, as if I needed a new hobby! This one, though, is immediately rewarding. Our backyard is only about 70% done but it's already made such a difference. We can actually hang out in the back now! We can sit and enjoy the breeze. Now I just have to untrain Lulu to pee on concrete so that she can come out and enjoy the backyard too.