Grape hyacinth in the front lawn.

One of the nicer aspects of restoring order to our neglected yard has been discovering new plants as we weed and mulch parts of the garden that had been completely overgrown by liriope and ivy. I’ve spoken about the appearance of new clumps of bulbs along the side beds, but even the ones I’ve known about are doing better this year. The two grape hyacinths in the front yard have multiplied, putting up four flowers this spring. I love the perky look of them against the grass, and plan to again avoid them with the mower. Looking back over my notes from last year, I see that I recorded their location as ‘just at the border of the grass’ and the bare dirt under the maple. I’m pleased to see that the grass has made inroads into that bare area, as the hyacinths are now a good foot or more into the lawn.

New azaleas in the front foundation bed.

After talking about it for a couple of years, this week was the time for actually clearing out the neglected foundation bed and planting two new azaleas. I considered camellias for some time, but none of the ones I’ve seen in our town have been free of brown frost spots, so I decided that the climate was just a little harsh for them. To keep the front relatively consistent color-wise, I chose white azaleas; the white azalea and pieris in the other foundation bed look nice against the brick. Our neighbor helpfully adopted the two big barberries that had been plunked by the porch — we are thinking of them as burglar deterrents along her back fence — which cleared up the space for planting. I spent a couple of hours loosening the soil and clearing a good lawn bag full of roots from that area and then prepped the whole space with generous additions of humus and peat. Per the instructions I found on the internet, I created two nicely aerated mounds for the plants and then covered the whole area with enough mulch to keep the water from sitting at the foundation. To finish off that bed I added the taller of the woodland phlox varieties I’d picked up at Behnke’s and planted out the lavender near the front step, after adding more peat and mixing some garden lime into the dirt.

I’m satisfied with the outcome and look forward to seeing the shrubs grow and the phlox spread out over the next couple of years. I have more plans for the front of the house, not least of which is to mow the lawn, but they’ll wait a couple of days. I worked to get the bare ground covered before the rain that was anticipated for this weekend, and that included moving a couple of hostas from the backyard to the north side of the house. I’d cleared a strip of liriope from along the foundation there, and once I had the hostas in place I mulched the whole stretch with pine bark chips (my mulch material of choice, as it has some color but doesn’t reek like shredded hardwood mulch). I don’t love hostas, but we have a couple of them in the backyard so I’ll see if they’ll take along the north side of the house. If so, I’ll move the rest and create a narrow foundation bed the length of the house.

Tenacious lilies-of-the-valley coming up along the back of the house.

I’ve mostly left the back to itself for the time being, relying on the clearing we did last year to hold us while I get the front tidied up. The leaf mulch seems to have been good for the bulbs under the dwarf cherry, as the lilies-of-the-valley are coming up like crazy. My plan is to move them to under the holly tree, on the south fence, and encourage them to spread into a nice ground cover there; this is also my plan for the crested irises I purchased. First, though, that area needs to be cleared of liriope and soil-treated; we — and by ‘we’ I mean my partner and his friend — got the space about half cleared last summer, and I plan to tackle it over the next week. Or so.

Today, though, I’m going to enjoy the fruits of my labor and watch the bees buzz around the new flowers.

Shoots in the front bed. From top to bottom: early-blooming yellow daylilies, garlic chives, and late-blooming orange daylilies.

Assessing the yard this spring, I’m relatively pleased with what I have to work with. A thick leaf mulch still covers the beds, although I’ve raked the leaves away from the plants I’m trying to encourage: the crowns of the peonies, the bluebells, the poppies. I have big plans for the whole year, and I’m raring to go; it’s hard to believe that this is more than two weeks sooner than my first garden-related post last year. Granted, it’s been a mild winter, and the warm weather has caused everything to pop up a bit earlier than usual, which contributes to the feeling that every moment is one with valuable potential for yard work. Nonetheless, I’m proud of myself for the progress I’m already making.

My nemesis in our overgrown garden is liriope. For reasons that remain unfathomable to me, folks around here love their liriope. I see it all around the DC area: taking water from trees in city boxes, smothering flowering bulbs in residential border gardens, and running wild from any bed where it’s been planted and left untended. This last is the case with our yard: we had liriope crowding trees in the back yard, smothering bulbs in the front yard, and popping up all through the backyard in competition with the grass that my partner is so keen to preserve. Never have I been so keen to kill something, and I relish every chance to get to dig those suckers out by their runner roots.

The bed to the right of the front steps, after the first day of weeding. Behind the daffodils, in the rear left corner, are the crocuses rescued from the left bed. The remaining liriope is still visible in the lower right corner; in that area was another clump of tenacious crocuses.

Given my animosity for the plant, the first thing I did in the garden this year was dig some up. I cleared it completely from the small bed to the left of the front steps, unearthing a sizable cluster of crocus shoots when I did. I made it about halfway through the bed on the right side of the steps before hitting my three-hours-in-a-row wall for laboring in the garden. The right bed required a bit more care, as it contained the daffodils that I am working hard to preserve. After only two flowers last year, I’ve been granted ten buds this year, and the last thing I wanted to do was stress the plants so much that they wouldn’t open. Three hours got me one and a half liriope-free beds, and a gigantic bag of lawn trash. I was reasonably satisfied, and vowed to return to dig another day.

The new bed, with spindly daffodils from the backyard and a variety of crocuses from the front beds. I don’t expect they’ll bloom this year, but I look forward to seeing what they’ll produce next spring.

That other day was today. Having discovered daffodils along the south fence of the backyard and even more clumps of crocus in front of the house on the left, I was eager to create a more permanent spot for them. I created a little bed around the front light post (sorry, grass), into which I moved all the daffodils from the backyard. That took about an hour, after which I broke for lunch. After lunch, I spent another hour moving all the crocus sprouts that weren’t blooming, with their resident earthworms, to the new bed. Finally, I tackled the remaining liriope to the right of the front steps. I successfully cleared the rest of the liriope from the small bed itself, after which I moved the crocuses to the new bed and the freed daffodils to the vacant corner made by the steps and the porch. I expect that the daffodils are tall enough to get light over the steps and smaller plants can be set between the daffodils and the lawn. Another day. After covering the new bed with a light leaf mulch and clearing up the weeds, which generated another big lawn bag of refuse, I called it a day.

When I think of the work I’m doing in the garden, I am put in mind of a quote I read somewhere—maybe a blog, maybe one of the garden books I’ve been consulting lately, they tend to blur together—that said, the difference between a landscaper and a gardener is maintenance. I find that I move between these two roles, and a third one of ‘plant rescuer’: killing and uprooting the invasives; tending the successful beds I’ve been able to eke out of the overgrowth; and moving or nurturing the plants that we continue to find under all the mess. Maybe one day my ‘gardening’ will consist of a snip here and some weeding there, but today is definitely not yet that day.