It's been a year after buying our first house in the Montgomery area and we finally have settled in enough to have time for gardening. We are trying to plan our approach to caring for our landscape (inherited from the previous owner), but both of us are (extreme) beginners and have no idea how or when to start. I think the first order of business is identifying what we actually have growing around the house! I've taken MANY pictures, so beware of the long load time. The previous owner had the yard professionally landscaped and maintained and left of a lot of goodies! Unfortunately, we are on a limited budget and would like to do all the work ourselves. With no further ado, here is what we have:

1. Yaupon holly
2. Large one in center: Ligustrum
3-4. ?? Maybe you can send pictures of leaves when there are some.
5. Ligustrum pruned up to tree form.
6-7. ? variegated ligustrum?
8. Azalea
9-11. Loropetalum rubrum
12-14. an ornamental grass expert will have to tackle those.
15-17. Cherry?
18-19. ?
20. Crepe Myrtle? Again, need to see leaves.
21. ?
22. Cherry probably Kwanzan?
23. The vine is a jasmine.
24. Liriope ("Monkey grass")
25-26. ?
27. Loropetalum

I've run out of time, so hope someone else will check these and fill in the blanks.

A general comment: You've got some nice flowering things, but with the foundation shrubs, if you're not going to hire someone to maintain them, be prepared to do a LOT of pruning. Personally, I'd start replacing a lot of the shrubs with things that will be easier to maintain. When you get all these identified, you can start a new post asking for suggestions on changes to make.

1. Japanese holly but not sure which one
2. This looks like a Gardenia to me, perhaps with black sooty mold. Would sure like to see a close-up of some leaves.
3,4. Not sure of the tree species, but the trunk sure has lots of epicormic growth, and signs of internal disease. I'm guessing that it's not in the best of health.
5. Ligustrum, pruned (not too nicely) to tree form. You could do a much better job. For starters, remove all of the stuff coming up from the bottom. You may decide that this is the wrong shrub to have so close to the house (and eaves). Often planted on the corners, for some reason. Removal of same was the first landscaping chore that we did when we moved into our home!
6,7. This looks like one of the variegated Euonymus, to me.
8. Azalea
9,10,11. Loropetalum
12,13,14. Don't know which grass, but it needs to be cut back NOW. Cut all of the dead stuff back to the ground and let the new growth emerge.
15,16,17. Maybe a cherry? Or other ornamental fruiting something. It has been suckering from below the graft union (which you can see on the primary trunk). All of those suckers should be removed entirely, and stake should be taken out, too. You can see how the binding has been choking the life out of the main trunk. Hopefully, this tree will thrive with those two tasks accomplished.
18.Japanese Cleyera
19.Sago Palm. I expect that the hard winter did this damage, and maybe killed them outright. Are these common in that area (I wouldn't think so, but don't know that) ? The dead fronds won't come back and will have to be removed. You'll know if the plant's crown has died before too long.
20. Yikes, a crape myrtle, but not a very pretty one! The typical crape has a beautiful 'skeleton', great bones in the winter. This one....not so much, lol!
21. That looks like a Tea Olive (Osmanthus fragrans), to me.
22. Looks like a cherry
23. I'd like to see a close-up of the foliage, but it looks like a Carolina Jessamine to me. If it begins to bloom with fragrant yellow flowers soon, you'll know. Yes, I spelled that right. :-)
24. Appears more like Ophiopogon, rather than Liriope. Ophiopogon is commonly called Mondo grass.
25. Darned if I know what this is for sure, though I KNOW it! Might be a hydrangea? Looks like it's in a shaded part of the property, judging by the holly fern in front of it.
26. Is this another var. Euonymus or a var. ligustrum?
27. Loropetalum

Re the crepe/crape [either is acceptable] myrtle, it's hard to tell from the picture but if the bark is as cinnamon colored as it appears it might look OK in the winter. I'd let it bloom before deciding what to do about it. They should have removed the middle trunk years ago and left one that wasn't so cramped and overlapping. There's not much way to fix that now, but the appearance would be improved by proper pruning to remove branches that grow into the center across other trunks and the ones that grow at right angles out to the sides of the tree instead of following the upward vase shape of the others.

You might want to search for some of these plants on the internet to see pictures and descriptions. You'll find a lot of information on gardenweb, but I usually search on Dave's Garden to get detailed info and pictures. [Gardenweb's new anti spam software won't let me post the link to the other site, but just make one word out of it and add a .com. ;-) ]

I'm not sure which I'll tackle next (suggestions?), but I'm very concerned about the tree being diseased!

Lastly (for now, anyway), should I go ahead and trim all the brown/yellow fronds off of the sago palms...assuming they might be alive? Right now, that would mean removing every singe frond!

It doesn't really matter, but I say that #24 is Liriope. Mondo is much more dense & has narrower leaves. Whichever it is, it should be weed-whacked to the ground....like TODAY. Just be careful not to whack it too close to the ground & damage the new growth emerging. This is not absolutely necessary....but I think it just looks better to get rid of last years growth.

I don't know nuffin' 'bout sagos -- they're not hardy this far north.

For next steps, I'd work on these: remove the suckers and the stake from the cherry (?) tree in 15-17 and the suckers and stray top growth in 5; do some research on sooty mole and decide if that's what's making the leaves dark on the shrub in 2; when the loropetalum finishes blooming, cut the long stems way back then decide if you need to prune them all over. They may be too big for the places where they are, so you might want to consider moving or removing them this winter so you won't spend all your time fighting to keep them smaller than nature meant for them to be. They're pretty plants, so you might want to just move them to a better spot and put something smaller close to the house and deck. Look over all the flowering fruit trees and the crepe myrtle(?); remove crossing branches and any others that don't fit with the overall shape you want. Be sure always to cut back to the joint where the branch meets a larger one.

That should keep you busy for a while, but if this were my house, I'd have to begin to reshape and soften the bed lines and add lots of flowering plants. That's a matter of individual preference, but I love lots of perennials. ;-) You might want to start a new thread with a picture of the front of the house and any other areas for which you'd like to have input.

2. Gardenia
5. Waxleaf ligustrum (large plant), some type of
variegated euonymous, maybe 'Emerald & Gold' (smaller plant)
6. Variegated euonymous (as above)
8. Some type of azalea
9. Some type of loropetalum
12. Maybe miscanthus 'Little Kitten' or pennisetum 'Little
'Bunny' (more likely)
18. Pittosporum (maybe 'Wheeler's Dwarf')
19. Sago palm
20. Some type crepe myrtle
21. Osmanthus fragrans
23. Osmanthus fragrant on right, Carolina jessamine on
trellis
24. Liriope
25. Three hydrangeas and a holly fern on the left
26. Variegated euonymous (same as above - 'Green & Gold perhaps)
27. Some type loropetalum

Ljbrandt, I'm going to suggest that you leave the Crape myrtle alone. It was a very bad specimen to begin with; more like a nursery cull if you ask me. It 'might' have been salvageable as a teensy weensy youngster.

However, though it is almost always suggested that crossing and rubbing branches be eliminated, I would hesitate to do so on this tree. What you'd be left with would be very awkward looking, indeed. To say nothing about how stressful the removal of that much mass is to the overall health of the tree.

I'd like to see the upper branches of this tree. Have the original owners topped it (whacked it down) at any time? If not, it might not be bad looking, after all!

Don't go crazy with your pruners! The worst thing you can do is whack things off before understanding how, when, and why...and IF something should be pruned.

For now, go ahead and remove all of the growth coming from the bottom of that Ligustrum (#5). You want to maintain a trunk just like a pretty tree. Remove any stems that have died, too. A pair of sharp hand pruners for this job. Looks like about a 5 minute project.

Same goes for that ornamental whatever-it-is. The pretty pink flowered tree you mistook for a dogwood on your photo album. ALL of those long stems coming from the base of the plant need to be removed. The wrap holding the stake to the main trunk MUST be removed. Poor little thing.

That long line of Euonymus needs to be sheared. I hate what gas powered or electric shears do to plants, and would get a good pair of long handled shears to keep on hand.

Good job on the grass! Keep us up to date on your progress! Before and after pictures are fun.

I'd be interested in seeing a picture when it blooms and of the whole tree structure.

Stay tuned...just need to get some hand sheers and loppers from harbor freight :-)

15 17 azalea
21 sago palm
22 Crepe myrtle
23 The one on right is a camelia
24 monkey grass and fern
25 26 azalea

We can't see a great deal of that Crape myrtle from the images we've been given. It appears that some 'cleaning up' might be in order, but my comments were on behalf of ljbrandt. I've seen countless woody ornamentals ruined in one fell swoop, haven't you?

ljbrandt, you know that you can email those of us who have included our email in our (MY PAGE) link, don't you? I'm sure some of would like to help.