New Planting beds

I have finally decided, after spending all afternoon in the yard, what my new planting bed will look like.

As I have said before, my current beds are 3 feet wide and all around the outskirts of the yard, as well as up close to the house. They are full of hibiscus bushes, plumerias, gingers, heliconias and passifloras. I wanted the new bed to contain some of the same elements, but also introduce new shrubby bushes that I have acquired at the raffles. Still, I don't want them to overpower the back.

Since the back yard isn't all that huge - 75 feet wide by 20 feet deep, anything extra I put in will monopolize the space. I have decided to put in a new bed that will be centered in the back, about 6 feet wide, and running about 50 feet long, divided in the middle for a fountain.

I started by thinning out the newly-blooming shell ginger, planting that along the left hand edge of the new bed, as though continuing the walkway from the back gate. I planted ten rhyzomes of the ginger into a small cluster.

Next I placed the garden ornaments that will have to stay - the bird bath, the birdfeeder, a concrete japanese lantern, garden stools. They are in small groupings -- the stools around the fountain, the bird bath in the center of one half of the bed and the feeder on the other.

Then I started spacing out all of the potted plants that I have been nurturing for the past few months from the raffles -- a miniature variegated chiflera, clerodendron, painted ti, a bright orange hibiscus and a deep yellow hibiscus, gardenia, and a hybrid brugmansia (pink/apricot cross). These plants make up one half of the planting bed, and the ginger rhyzomes I got over the weekend will fill in the center spaces allowing them plenty of room to spread.

I still have to fill in the other half, which will have more of the rhyzomes, a mock-orange jasmine, the dwarf shell ginger (thinned from my other bush), and I am looking for a yellow brugmansia since I don't have one yet. Either that, or I will transplant my white one there. I will try to make the two halves mirror images of each other, if only in size of plants. I will get a couple of hybrid hybiscus, a cherry red ti, and I am open to suggestion for anything else. I still have lots of plumeria cuttings that will be filling in.

Please let me know if I am wrong in my planning. I am unsure if all of these are sun tolerant. My yard will be mostly full sun, and I am pretty sure everything is okay with that. I will be extending the drip system through this area in the next week, so it will be low care once I put in the mulch. I'll be taking photos of the progress.

I am very optimistic that I can pull all of this off. The next project will be the front of the house. I want to get in there with a chain saw and remove all of the old shrubs - ixoras, portocarpus, sea grape, aloevera - all with 40 years growth. They are tired and I am tired of looking at them. I want the front to be much more tropical looking. And I want to finally plant the small half moon in the center of my circular driveway. I didn't think I would ever get that nasty city mulch out of the driveway, so I know I can get the front relandscaped too! Bryan