Dining Room Window Garden

Planting under the cottonwood tree on the east side of the house was probably a mistake. The cottonwood sucks up all the water, smothers plants in dropped leaves and it's been hard to get anything going with the root competition.

But those windows dominate the whole east side of the house and they are positioned low, so the ground level area under the cottonwood is visible from inside the whole length of the dining room and den.

So I planted.

Now, in late summer, the ground is getting covered with early leaf drop. Later there will be way, way more.

The groundcover plumbagos at the front of the garden and the rock swale are completely smothered.

This should be the plumbagos' season. They should be visible, thickly massed, deep green with vivid blue flowers. Other patches in other gardens look lovely now.

Mine have light green foliage, a few sparse flowers and are not really visible at all. And it is still summer really.

The tall Woods rose at the back stands up above the mess of leaves and the taller plants like the Texas betony and Icicle veronicas are vertical enough to still be seen among the leaf litter.

But I should probably do something about the plumbagos.

I originally wanted this garden to be a shrubbery with greenery and texture, not really a flower garden. 

I still do, but getting shrubs going in the root competition wasn't working. The shallower perennials took. At least some did.

The plumbagos have been spreading over the years, but like all my plants, the individual clumps don't touch, don't mass together. They are nice enough edging the rock ditch, but I have seen such rich looking groundcovers elsewhere, and this patch doesn't look like much.

I guess at a minimum I need to get the blower out and regularly blow the area clean. So many more leaves to fall, though . . .