Picking out Plants!

Yesterday we had an appointment with our landscape architect to design the BDH's yard! Although hubby and I both readily admit to NOT having green thumbs, it was a lot of fun! Our landscape architect, Dave, from Accent Design Landscape Architecture was awesome. He was so professional, incredibly knowledgeable about plants and most of all, super sweet. I also really appreciated the fact that he was willing to meet us outside working hours (I'm a working barbie, and despite my super nice boss, I can't be off taking house meetings all day).

The process is this (as best I understand):

1) We meet with him to walk around our yard and discuss what type of shrubs, topiaries, flowering trees and shade trees we want. Check!
2) He uses our preferences, soil conditions, lot layout and grade, and his amazing landscaping expertise to design our yard.
3) We approve the design.
4) Queenscape Landscaping executes his plan by buying and "installing" (as the lanscape pro's say) our plants.

After all of Dave's great advice, his interpretation of our taste (which we all now think is a 'French landscape style'), and his explanation of how the rest of Hasentree's yards are trending (which is a 'European landscape style', which apparently includes our French style), these are the plants we've decided on:

Shade Tree
We get one shade tree standard, and this was the one thing they didn't really give us a choice on, although we do ultimately really like it.

October Glory Maple

Flowering Trees
One of each of these come standard for our front yard, but we're buying one extra of each since our front yard is really wide and we like a lot of trees. These are the three trees he recommended, and since he's the pro and these all looked good, this is what we're going with! We'll have each of these:

Purple Leaf Plum

Kwazan Cherry

Evergreen Foundation Shrubs
These were both Dave's suggestions also, which we agreed with. He knows best for sure.

Evergreen azaleas

Evergreen hollies

Flowering Shrubs
We get 55 flowering shrubs in our front yard included in our landscaping package that came with the house. You can mix and match these, but we chose three varieties. They may mix in more types beyond these three, depending on whats available when they go to the nursery, but these are the three we chose.

Hydrangeas

Hydrangeas are my absolute favorite plant, they were one of our wedding flowers and they totally epitomize the French garden theme, according to Dave, so they were a MUST. From what Dave says, all hydrangeas are the same genetically, but the flowers can be white, blue or pink depending on the acidity of the soil. Acidic soil makes blue flowers, a neutral pH makes white hydrangeas and a basic soil makes pink hydrangeas. Although I don't usually go for blue, I LOVE blue hydrangeas. I'm also nuts about pink and white hydrangeas, so picking would be a tough call. Luckily the soil gets to decide, not us.
Spoiler alert: Dave said the soil pH throughout Hasentree is acidic, so our hydrangeas will be blue!

Gardenias

Rose Knockout

Evergreen Corner Trees
These are just evergreen trees. The variety we're getting along the foundation are one of the smaller species of evergreen trees. We're getting the bigger version as privacy trees. These are included in our package but the privacy trees are not.

Door Accent Topiaries
We chose the swirled topiaries over the pom pom topiaries.We get two of these, and they go on either side of the steps leading to the front door. I was so excited to find out we get these free! They're so chic!

Privacy Trees
These aren't free, but we wanted a little privacy in our backyard. Don't get us wrong, we LOVE our neighbors and feel like we've hit the jackpot with them, but I think everyone appreciates a little personal space. Plus, our nextdoor neighbor installed some on his side already, so it's only fair that we also pay for privacy that we both benefit from. Anyway, the trees we're getting here are evergreens (that look like Christmas trees!), but they're a hardier, faster growing, bigger version than the evergreen trees we're getting beside our foundation.

Stone Pavers
For some reason, these also come through the landscaper. They're stones that you put at the base of your driveway, for 4-6 feet, to add a little driveway pizazz. We've wanted authentic flagstone pavers since long before we even decided on this house, but it turns out that they're a little cost prohibitive. For about half the cost, we can get these stone imitation stone pavers. They're still a little pricey, so we haven't made a final decision on them yet. We'll see though. What do you barbies think? Worth the extra cash?

Best of all, Dave makes sure that all the plants of clashing colors are plants that will bloom at different times (so the pink bushes will never be in bloom when the read tree is). He also plants the trees in places that flatter the house and make mowing easiest. He really thinks of it all!

xox barbies!