Hi Tracy,
welcome to the forum.

It might be a good idea to hold back this first year and observe what the existing garden has. If you bought the house late last fall, you missed any spring and summer blooming plants.

Are there any plants starting to come up? Are there shrubs or trees with buds on them? Don't be too quick to do any weeding. Might be perennials. If there are beds, there is likely to be some color. Or, are you planning to carve out new beds? or expand existing beds?

It also might be worthwhile to make a "sun chart" to fully learn where and how much sun you get. "Full sun" is at least 6 hours of direct sun. "Partial shade" is 3-5 hours of direct sun or more of filtered sun. And "shade" is anything less than that. Also morning sun and afternoon sun have quite different effects. Mark the areas next to the house as well as the perimeter areas with the time of day sun is on them. A soil test is a good idea too. Any soil amendments would be based on the results. Your overall success is ultimately connected to the soil quality.

For best chance of success, it is good to pick plants that like a range of sun and soil conditions. i.e. Full Sun to Part-shade, average to well-draining soil, etc.

I usually have a plant I want and need to figure out where to put it. But for the other way around, one website I like to use to help me think of plants for conditions is FineGardening.com. THere is a Plant Selector tool for zone, light, color, etc. There are similar websites out there. perennialresource.com is another. Also whiteflowerfarm.com

Also, your first year might be good to stick mostly with annuals to get some easy color while you learn and observe. How much time do you want to put into your gardens? Do you want low-maintenance? Perennials are higher maintenance than most people think. THey take a few years to really provide impact. Flowering shrubs are less maintenance. Annuals generally provide the most color but obviously need the most start-up time.

Having said all that, Heucheras and Geranium 'Rozanne' come to mind as two easy perennials to get started with for part-shade.

Welcome Tracy,
Wendy has some good advice for you I might also ad that you spend a lot of time this year looking at other peoples gardens. This may help you better decide what type and style of garden you would like. The Garden Conservancy has quite a few tours in Ma and throughout New England. You might also find it helpful to walk around your neighborhood as well as other neighborhoods that you find appealing and take note of the landscape, whenever you can donÂt be shy to ask the homeowner about their landscape most folks find that very flattering. The one thing I always tell new gardeners to do is take a million photos I wish I had pictures of my earlier gardens. Good Luck. Katy

Tracy: WendyB has great advice - don't be too quick to make a new garden when you may already have some nice plants that just aren't up yet. Light is tricky too; you may have full sun now in some areas because the trees haven't leafed out yet, but they will give shade later.

Also, the angle of the sun varies during the year. When the sun is low in early spring there might be trees blocking sunlight, but when the sun is high overhead you'll suddenly get sun.

If you're really aching to put your stamp on the garden ASAP, you can sometimes ease that ache with a few big containers filled with annuals or perennials you might want to plant later. Put the containers right by your front door or wherever they'll please you while you're waiting to see what's out there.

This should be a great fun year for you!

Claire

Hi Tracy...I'm new here too but I'd second all the advice given by runktrun and Wendy - I did exactly what they said am glad I did. :-) Like you I bought my first non-condo house a couple of years ago..we moved in in May, I forced myself to stick to annuals and baskets/containers, and lived with it through the fall. I live in Newport in a neighborhood with lots of "secret gardens" and was lucky enough to be able to visit many of them after meeting my new neighbors. Many of those I saw are actually on our secret garden tour and so are quite special.

Thank goodness my garden is very small because even still, as a new gardener, I was overwhelmed. I had a basic idea of the "feel" I wanted. (New England, Japanese and Victorian influences for my Victorian house. ;-) ) but since I know nothing about plants (what works well where, and with what, what's easy care, what's a little more interesting or out of the ordinary), and we ripped everything out and started from scratch (you should have SEEN this place before we spruced up the curb appeal!) I had to get help.

Anyway, point is, don't rush - you might end up with a mish-mash that you will only be ripping out later.

I'm a sucker for Hydrangeas, and they'd definitely do well in your conditions. (assuming you don't have them already) Check out Endless Summer (talked about alot recently on this forum) - I have some and they're amazing, blooming until the first freeze.

Ohhhhh but waiting is simply too hard!!! LOL
Any suggestion for even a few to at least let me dapple a bit this summer!!!!!
I'll be checking into the Endless Summer Hydrangeas
Thanks for the suggestion!!!

Glad to have you here, Tracy!

You don't have to just wait - that's why you get annuals and pots. View this year as a prep year that will make the remainder of your gardening years in this house more successful and rewarding. One other thing you can do this summer besides annuals & pots is to work on improving your soil. Once we are well into summer and you know what you have (& you may want an experienced gardener to walk around your garden with you to help figure out what are weeds and what are plants worth keeping) you can plant a cover crop to turn in come fall or start working in compost (does your town have a composting program where you can pick up finished compost free or cheap?) or even just top dressing with compost. I really think that the best thing you can do to have a successful garden is to start with good soil, and that's always easier before you plant, amending whole beds with organic matter rather than just adding it to planting holes which tends to restrict root growth. If you can't get compost, look up lasagna gardening or sheet composting. Any organic matter added will be to the good, particularly in your sandy soil.

Watching your garden for a season while planting temporary plants (that's where annuals and pots come in) will help you get a feel for light levels, moisture levels (are there areas that stay damp to gooey all year or other areas that are powder dry in high summer?) while giving you time to decide what you want from a garden as others have suggested along with knowing a bit about how you will use the yard. Where will the BBQ be? Do you want a patio in sun or shade? Do you need a play space for kids? Do your pets have favorite places to run, sleep or dump? (Not good places for plants!) Where do folks take short cuts around the yard (don't try to plant there or else give them stepping stones to cross the garden.)

Around here early fall is the best time to plant since warm soil and cooler air coupled with regular rain make it easier for the plants to settle in. You can spend your summer like KPaquette, visiting other gardens and deciding on plants and styles you like. (Take a camera and a notebook so that if photos are allowed you can have records of plants you like, & be sure to take good notes &/or make sketches to keep track of ideas and plant names.) Another good source of ideas is your local public library and book stores, as they often have great eye candy that will get your creative juices flowing. Finally, there are frequently sales in the fall, so you'll get more bang for your buck as long as the plants are healthy.

Some ideas for this year's dappling - Coleus comes with red or green or yellow leaves (usually some combination) and likes shady areas. Outdoors, it makes a great pot plant that you can then cut back before the first frost and keep it all winter as a sunny window sill plant. There are many Salvias that may or may not be hardy for you (but aren't for me) like Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue' which grows well in a large pot and attracts humming birds. Scarlet runner beans are an annual vine that will twine up a trellis or strings. They have screaming red flowers that the hummers love and you can eat the beans as green beans if picked young or harvest the mature pods for dried beans. Nicotiana in a self-seeding annual that has red, pink, white, or chartreuse flowers with heavenly late afternoon and night-time scent.

Tracy,

How big is your property? Are you just looking for flowers or would you like some suggestions on some trees and shrubs?

There are a few people in the forum that share your pain of sandy soil. I'm one. Claire is also in that boat. I suggest adding compost to your soil to improve it's fertility and water retention.

As far as annuals, I've had a lot of success with marigolds and petunias. Both of them can tolerate sandy soil.

Quite a few perennials will do okay including those that come from bulbs. I've never had any problems with daylilies, daffodils, Lupine, hyacinth, grape hyacinth, peonies, red-hot poker, bleeding hearts, astilbe, Russian sage, Veronica, and many others.

Several shrubs do well in sandy soil. Large-leaf rhododendrons, hydrangeas, rugosa roses, Knockout roses, PJM rhododendrons, Rose of Sharon, red-twig dogwoods and many others have all done well at my place. As far as shrubs don't forget evergreen shrubs that come in a variety of colors (blue, yellow, gold, purple in winter, various shades of green) and textures that can provide all year interest. There are also evergreens such as hollies that develop berries with bright color.

As far as trees, crabapples do great on sandy soil and provide multiseasonal interest. Magnolias aren't too picky about soil. You wouldn't think that Japanese maples would be happy planted in sandy soil but I have several and I've never had a problem with them. They come in a variety of leaf shapes, leaf colors (can be a different color each season), and sizes.

Our lot is actually decent size almost 2 acres but lots of it is wooded mostly by pine trees. The previous owner had a few things planted but not very much. There are two azela shrubs, which are already starting to bloom. There are two Hydrangeas planted but I don't know what type and from what I can see so far they don't look very hopeful as the new growth seem to be coming from the ground, not the old branches.

What bulbs could I plant in a part sun part shade area that would produce summer time flowers?If I plant bulbs this spring would I get flowers this summer or would I have to wait until next summer to enjoy them??
Thanks for everyones advice!
Would

Don't give up on those hydrangea - some bloom on new wood (like panticulata). Once you're sure which branches are dead, prune them back. But this is a prime example of trying to have patience - you have to wait to see what they do to see what you have!

Here are some spring planted bulbs, from old house gardens, but you can find them elsewhere:

https://www.oldhousegardens.com/display.aspx?choices=Spring

And an article on types of hydrangea: