A few posts ago, which was actually a few months ago, we asked for your suggestions regarding a little plot of dirt in front of our house. I'm just now realizing that we never responded to your comments. My goodness, we are incredible jackasses.
Well as you can see in the photo above, we have the space cleared out and ready for planting in the Spring. Our primary concern was what we would plant towards the back of the bed. I do believe our plan will be to plant an elderberry and a huckleberry in the back corners and then sort through your suggestions for the space in front. We're hoping for a nice balance between flowers and fillers. I suppose time will tell.
15 December 2009
Follow up
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5 comments:
Elderberry will be great to have, especially when the next flu epidemic comes around.
Apparently double-blind tests show it working better than Tamiflu.
How big is the space? Elderberry is pretty shade tolerant, but they do get pretty quite big unless you can locate a dwarf cultivar. Are you thinking an ornamental or species type? Something to keep in mind is that you need to different cultivars for pollination, although Fedco Trees has one they consider more self-fertile than most. There is an ornamental cultivar with purple leaves and pink flowers; I can't recall the name just now, but I thought it look pretty promising.
Hello Joel,
One of my fondest childhood memories was making and consuming elderberry jelly. Anything else is extra Credit:)
Hi Ali and Dan,
Hmm. I picked a lot of elderberries when I was younger and I could have sworn I was taller than most of the shrubs. I must have my memories scrambled (It's been known to happen). We do have about 50 square feet to work with, but I'm feeling like we'll have to investigate some other options. Thanks for the heads up.
You could always use herbs as groundcover. I know there are some varieties of oregano that works and thyme would work plus they are quite pretty and it would save some space in the back yard for other things. Maybe some edible flowers to make it a little more conventional. I have a mature dwarf blueberry that has topped out at 3 feet high and wide. That may just fit nicely. Have fun!
I'm guessing that you won't want to do a lot of maintenance with people going by, but it would be good to demonstrate that you can have edible attractive plantings. I would go for a few ballerina apples - which simply grow as a vertical pole, and with luck have apples, dill or fennel are nice and easy, gooseberry are spiky if you want to keep people back, redcurrents are good croppers, whereas potatoes are a good first crop and would get the neighbours talking. Good luck - Peter Reid
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