New to the forum (and to gardening),

17 years ago

so I've got a lot of questions. First, though, I'd like to give y'all a little background. My wife and I bought an "as is" house last March. Let me tell, this house was the epitomy of a fixer-upper. The entire backyard was filled with privet (about 3/5 of an acre shaped like a football field and sloping up from the house to back property line); so, we spent many hours clearing that out. However, we are lucky enough to have found a few huge azaleas, 10 dogwoods, and a massive garedenia. After clearing out everything else we pretty much had a blank slate. Oh yeah, we had to pull out everything in the front flower bed as well.

In the front, we have planted encore azaleas, dwarf gardenias, camelias, a little gem magnolia and a cherry tree and a few other things that I can't remember the name of. In the back we have planted forsythia, tea olive, quince, confederate jasmine, carolina jessamine, mondo grass, hydrangea (endless summer, glory blue, and smowflake oakleaf), delaware valley white azaleas, and august beaty gardenias.

Now, on to a few questions.

The backyard is fenced in from the front corners of the house back. On one side we have the fence exposed to the street and we would like a large evergreen (preferably flowering) plant to go on either side of the gate. Any ideas?

I have heard gardenias are hard to grow. Does that apply to dwarf gardenias as well august beauty? Furthermore, the august beauty are planted near the massive gardenia I mentioned earlier. This plant has flourished unattended for about the last 10 years. Certainly that's a good indication for the new one's, right?

What are your favorite nurseries in the Birmingham area? We have been to Pike's and Hannah's (both on 280) but not really any of the others.

Sorry for such a long first post. I promise they won't all be like this. I look forward to hearing some responses.

Comments (4)

tedevore
17 years ago
Greetings.

You need to specify how many hours of sun the place gets where you want
ypur evergreen plants. Does it get both morning and and real hot afternoon sun? Also, you need to specify about what size you want the plant to get.
Those two things help narrow down the many many choices.

My only advice to someone getting started is not to learn the hard way, like I did, that your plants will never look really great and full if you do not spend time improving the soil before you even think about planting anything. Unless you are luckier than most of us, you too have heavy clay soil. Its worth spending a whole season just working on improving the soil in your planting areas before spending money on plants.

Plant Odyssey on Birmingham Southside and Myer's Nursery on Hwy. 31 in Pelham are good nurseries.
bcb77
17 years ago
Hey there,

Sounds like you've made a great start at it! I'm new to gardening as well, and these forums have been so helpful to me. The Alabama folks are super nice and will give you great advice.

Like the previous poster said, your sun/shade quotient would be good to know. A camellia is a nice evergreen flowering shrub that can be pruned into a tree (and, as a sidenote, also Alabama's state flower) but they are very slow growers. It might take years to get height but they are gorgeous when full grown trees. I planted to little ones last year in whiskey barrels and they have been covered in blooms all winter.

I don't think gardenias are hard to grow. I bought a 5 gallon plant 2 years ago and filled the hole around the rootball with about a 2 foot diameter of Miracle Grow and that thing is HUGE now. It's probably about 4 1/2 feet tall and the same diameter or larger. It gets weighed down with blooms all summer. I'm sure someone here can give you more info on the dwarf variety.

I second the Myers Nursery recommendation in Pelham. They have a great selection, nice people. Also if you're up for a little road trip, head down to Jemison and visit Petals from the Past. It's a Must Do for any gardener. Jason Powell and family are excellent at what they do. Beautiful place.

Best of luck to you.
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rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
17 years ago
I'll add that the only problem with gardenias is their (almost guaranteed) attractiveness to whitefly, which can build up an enormous population in a very short time. These insects also affect the dwarf gardenia. So keep your eyes open!

Sounds like you have some of the best classic southern plants, what great fun you'll have.
biscuit97
Original Author
17 years ago
Thanks to both of you. With regard to preparing the soil, we had a lot of top soil brought in to fill our beds, so, hopefully the dirt will be fine (cross your fingers for us). We have left much of the slope as a "natural" area in which we are going to try to plant lots of native plants since that soil is all red clay. Do y'all think that is a good idea?

The area in front of the fence is shaded in the morning and gets direct, unfiltered afternoon sun. We would like for the plants to be about 5-6 feet tall (taller would be acceptable as well) with equal width. These plants would be used to soften the hard lines of the house and fence. Thanks for any recommendations.

Thank y'all so much for the nursery recommendations. I'll have to check those out soon.