Fall 2020 One Room Challenge - Week 4: Plant Picks

It’s Week 4 of the Better Homes & Gardens One Room Challenge and although we ran into rain (and snow) delays with our outdoor patio, I spent the past week purchasing all of the trees, shrubs and perennials for the last step of our project - our gardens.

I’ve found that Fall is the best time of year to purchase garden plants as many of the big box stores, local nurseries and garden centres want to clear out inventory so they don’t have to overwinter them. If you don’t have your heart set on certain plants and can work around remaining stock, shopping this time of the year is a good option to get a great garden on a budget.

“Anchor” Trees & Shrubs

For me, trees and shrubs are the “anchors” for any good garden design. One of my favourite trees of all time are “Chanticleer” pears - an ornamental pear with white blooms in the spring with green foliage that turns bright red in the fall. I just happened to find 3 deeply discounted pear trees at our local Home Depot a few weeks ago and placed them in the yard where I thought I would eventually plant them.

Ornamental “Chanticleer” pear Trees in our backyard

In addition to the 3 pear trees I wanted one more spring flowering tree that would provide some privacy for our kitchen window, a lilac to the replace the old hollow one that we had to remove, flowering shrubs to line the outside of the new fence and some evergreens (yews) to frame the shed including:

Robinson Flowering Crabapple
Hydrangea
Yellow Lilac
Forsythia
Yew
Winterberry

Anemone “honerine jonerine hobert” & winterberry from ego’s nurseries

Perennials

Just a couple of weeks prior to starting this challenge, I sold our home that we had lived in for nearly 10 years with large perennial gardens and established plants. Earlier this Spring and just before we moved this Fall, I split as many plants as I could so I could bring them with us to our new home at Grant’s, knowing that we would be building gardens there. I was able to bring all my favourites:

Peonies
Irises
Clematis
Anemones
Hostas
Hydrangeas

Bulbs

Although we had a few bunnies at our old home, Grant has many, many squirrels at his. In the Spring the squirrels ate several tulip bulbs and even irises so I knew that tulips might not be the best idea here. Instead we focused our choices on daffodils and narcissus that squirrels aren’t supposed to like as much and ordered several varieties from Vesey’s and Whistling Prairie Flowers which we will be able to hopefully plant this week after the snow melts and the weather warms.

With only 2 blog posts left and a few short weeks prior to the November 22nd challenge deadline we still have so much to do. With snow on the way and warm weather following we’re hoping to finish some major pieces of our project:

finish the patio and walkway
build the fence & gate
clad the shed with outdoor siding and paint it
build and plant the gardens

Fingers cross that we’ll be able to get it all done in time. Follow us here and on Instagram and be sure to take a look at what other guest participants and featured designers are doing as we all race to the finish line.

Carley