Your neighbor’s garage could look like this

Here’s a solution to a typically ugly spot – between your driveway and your neighbor’s garage.  This happens to be my garage, or former garage since I’ve had it converted into a toolshed (eat your heart out you, toolies!) and it’s what my neighbors would be seeing as they park their Prius if it weren’t for all this gorgeousness instead.  And this photo shows it at its worst – in February.  

From left to right you see:

• American holly
• Japanese acuba
• Foster hollies
• Miscanthus sinensis ‘Morning Light’
• And at their feet is an assortment of hostas, now invisible

Seems that I’m on my soapbox for evergreens again, and for BIG STUFF like shrubs and trees and huge grasses.  So before I step down, can we examine what labor and other resources are required to keep this looking so great?  Hacking the grass back in early spring, for sure.  Picking up the dead hostas leaves in the fall and applying mulch.  And removing the occasional branch of acuba that gets too tall and starts to droop down over the driveway.  Some supplemental watering for the  American hollies; all the rest have pulled through the longest of droughts with no help at all.

Here’s a little closer view showing the scene at the height of its summer lushness.