Shrubs is a guy that can't get no love from me.

Psych, lemme stop. Shrubs get all the love.

I've been bugging Twig about planting shrubs in his back yard for MONTHS and today was finally the day. His backyard needs some lovin' because one side is up against the neighbors garage and the back is right up against another neighbors side wall. My idea was to use a mix of evergreens and flowering shrubs (in yellow, purple, and white)  to add privacy and (hopefully) general interest and beauty. Also it doesn't hurt that it will shrink the amount of grass there is to mow.

I forgot to take a true "before" picture, but here it is with the plants on the ground:

I made my plans based on what I could find about sun and water needs with some consideration for staggered flowering times. The plans relied heavily on Yew and Juniper for the evergreens and Forsythia, Azalea, and bulb flowers for color. This required some negotiating (apparently Twig hates azaleas) and we ended up working out some early picks at Lowes.

We wandered around for at least a half hour, hemming and hawing over different varieties. We decided to start with a few of the more statement, big shrubs so they could get more time in the ground and then add in around them later. In the end we picked up a Forsythia, a Coppertina, and two Boxwood, plus a bag of compost and a few bags of mulch. (Plus a cement bulldog, to ease my pain of not being about the have a dog. Sigh.)

 

After bringing everything back to his place we put the plants down about where we wanted them (to best hide eye sores in the neighbors yard) then measured a circumference based on the stated max plant size. I was surprised by how much space everything will supposedly take up in full size, especially since they look kind of dinky right now. Twig used some strong to draw out the required area and we pushed everything around until they fell into place. The Forsythia, and Coppertina are nearly 5' in front of the back fence, and the boxwoods are staggered behind them to help fill in some of that blank space.

After that everything was straight forward...

Dig a hole about twice the size of the roots and throw in some compost:

Tease out the grass from the dirt (plus break up compacted chucks, pull out rocks, etc.):

Tease out the plant's roots. Put it in the hole and fill it in with the 'clean' dirt. Cover the area with mulch:

Take very low quality photos of your new plant. Repeat.

It doesn't look like much now, but I'm excited to see everything grown into place, and hopefully we'll add more plants in soon. This week we might put in some Iris bulbs between the Lilac bush and the right side fence. (Eventually the whole area around the Lilac bush will be bulbs, I hope!)