Bon Weekend: Garden Edition

After our hard work last weekend, my mom has been eagerly awaiting this post.  Here it is! To orient you, when we bought the house, the front yard was mostly hidden on one side by a gangly locust hedge and a row of transplanted mock orange bushes on the other.  And that arbor vitae on the right corner of the house:

The past owner took native landscaping very, very literally and dug up northern Rockies wildflowers and shrubs in the woods and replanted back here in town.  So we started with a yard full of sagebrush, mock orange, yarrow, larkspur and prairie smoke. And LOTS of weeds.  Weeds aside, I love all these plants--in moderation.  So we've worked hard to bring some order to all that wildness.  Mock orange blooms in early summer with delicate, white flowers that have a heavenly fragrance.  The rest of the year it's a little non-descript:

Apparently it's also Idaho's state flower!

 We cut the mock orange back so they're all about the same size.  Filling in with mulch "completes the look."

The biggest change was cutting down and pulling out the locust bushes entirely, which required our neighbor's pickup truck, a huge chain and a pulaski axe.  In place of the locusts, we planted 6 boxwoods.  They're slow growers, but the boxwood will be a welcome bit of evergreen here in the middle of winter here, which is gray, gray, gray.  [I am not a fan of western Montana in January.]

Again, the mulch totally transforms it.  I never knew I'd feel so passionately about mulch.  Even the scent of it when I go outside gives me this peaceful feeling of order in the world.  I might be slightly OCD, I know.  Eventually, we'll plant boxwood on the other side too, leaving the two tallest mock orange on the ends by the walkway so we'll smell them each time we pass by. 

The original plan was to create a bank of yellow daylilies behind the boxwood, but we decided to plant four of them in the beds under the windows instead. 

If the boxwood (which echoes the Charleston green shutters and trim) wasn't enough of a nod to my Southern roots, then this certainly is:

 

Sent by my parents' neighbor and good friend in Richmond.  We may have Idaho's state flower growing in the front borders, but it's Virginia's state flower (and tree!) that now adorns the front door.  The black porch chair also got a little extra flair:

Enjoying the end results: