You are not the first passer-by to be stopped mid-stride/mid-click by this Japanese maple.
Shortly after buying the house (years ago), the owners were offered $30 000 for the fine specimen by a man driving by who obviously recognized a good thing.
This photo was taken in October of 2006. Not quite a September shot, but a fitting prelude to the following...
While the maple is a show-stopper, the rest of Jim & Kathryn's front garden consisted mainly of a faint-hearted lawn. The site is too dark for grass, which meant a yearly task of overseeding and coddling to keep it going. Even so, it generally gave way to a lovely silvery-green skim of moss, which I preferred.
One happy day, I was given the go-ahead to replace the lawn. I literally ran a flat-edge shovel around to define the path-way; the pitiful grass peeled away like the skin of a fuzzy green fruit. That easy.
Two garden friends, 18 yards of manure-mix garden soil, and a few too many bluestone pavers later, the palette was ready for my order of plants: a selection of perennials and shrubberies with an emphasis on white/silver/blue variegation to add some glow to the le
afy gloom.
Everything was planted the fall of 2007 to get a head-start in root establishment. A hard winter ensued--no plants lost--followed by a gloriously lush spring and a summer of divinely-timed rainfall. So a great season for a new garden: everything quadrupled in size, as you can see from my recent visit (last photo).
