Last year, I had a customer that had about 30′ of peonies surrounding a deck. When I seen that, I had decided to get a lot of those for my own yard. Thankfully, the house that we just purchased had multiple peony plants. This is the first one to bloom. Right now the bush is glowing with multiple, huge pink flowers.
This is my first year to mess with iris’. I’ve really been enjoying them as they have been popping up all over the yard. I don’t know the names of any of them, but this was the first one to bloom.
When adding plants and trees to your landscape, be sure to see how big they are suppose to get when they are fully mature. It seems that when landscapes are put together, the landscaper tries to sell extra plants to fill it in. It looks great when he walks away, but usually the home owner has requested a “low maintenance” landscape. His theory is that he should not ever have to touch it. Then before he realizes it, the landscape is out of control. I am constantly hired to cut out bushes that have gotten way to big for the space that they were put in. The reason that I bring this up is because I noticed on one of my properties that I maintain, there was an identification tag on one of the trees that the last landscaper installed. To my surprise, it was a white oak tree that says it grows 50′-60′ tall and to expect that for the width. I about fell over. I could not believe that someone would plant a tree like that in the spot that they did. That tree is going to be a constant maintenance for the owner to keep it at a descent height.
When planting that new bush or tree, be thinking about when it is fully mature. Is it going to grow into the power lines, crowd out another plant, or will it be hanging over the sidewalk. The house I just bought has a 5′ deep landscape area up front. The bushes that were installed, filled the 5′ area plus was hanging completely over the 3′ sidewalk. You had to walk in the mud to get to the front door. I lived in the house right at a week before I cut down all of the bushes up front just so I could walk on the sidewalk.
This is a job that I done last week. This is a roof top garden in the city. Minimal work was done now, but as the summer comes upon us, we are going to add a lot of plants that will water fall out of the boxes. Right now there are variegated liropes installed. The four bigger containers are sky pencil hollies with white pansies.
Beautiful view up here. The new Sprint center is seen from here. There is a wall behind the picket fence. The free standing fence was installed to hold the containers and to keep people from hanging over the edges. 
160 one gallon liropes were planted.
The customer here had a double car garage on a raised ranch and they needed a little more space, so we eliminated one of the garages by building this nice fourth bedroom.
