An older couple, living in the sandhills region of South Carolina, had moved into the house 2 years ago and were looking to refresh their front and rear foundation plantings.   Specific asks that they had were:

• Improve the soil - Despite it being sandy, it was very compacted and lacking in any organic matter. Besides supporting the new plantings, they wanted to enrich the soil to give them greater flexibility in adding to the plantings in the future.

• Add color / flowers

• Add foundation shrubs that were size appropriate with hydrangeas in the back patio.

To address the soil, we added ~1.5-2” of compost and used a broadfork to de-compact the soil / lightly mix in the compost.  Using a broadfork allows us to loosen the soil without destroying the soil structure and activating the seedbank like a tiller would.  We weren’t looking to make this a super rich soil, but were just looking to add organic matter to improve the soil structure and moisture retention.

For the south/southeast facing back patio, we limbed up the existing Tea Olive and added 3 Little Lime Panicled Hydrangeas along the foundation.  We then added a mix of low growing Moss Phlox, Threadleaf Coreopsis, Homestead Purple Verbena, and Mouse-Eared Coreopsis at the front of the border. We used Society Garlic  and Russian Sage interplanted with Prairie Dropseed just behind the lower growing flowers.

The front was north/northwest facing, but very open.  Along the side of the garage, we replaced 2 Tea Olives, which were too large for the space and encroaching on the front entrance path, with 2 Taylor Juniper Eastern Redcedars which are highly columnar (only 3-4’ in width) and like dry soils.  As a border, we planted Blue Eyed Grass, which is a well behaved member of the iris family.   

The front entrance planting was previously filled with a mix of highly manicured larger Chinese Hollies (against the house) with ball shaped dwarf yaupon hollies of various sizes throughout the middle of the bed.  We removed one of the Chinese hollies which was blocking a sprinkler head.  To provide contrast with the dark color and highly sculpted hollies, we interplanted the hollies with pink muhly grass, with the idea that the pink seed heads and fine-textured grass blades would rise above the hollies.  In front of the forward-most muhly, we planted several Color Guard Yucca, which is a dwarf variegated yucca, that looks great with the muhly grass.  In front of the muhly and yuccas, we planted Homestead Purple Verbena, Threadleaf Coreopsis, Society Garlic, Mouse Eared Coreopsis, and Moss Phlox.  As a groundlayer, we added purple lovegrass, which is a low growing grass that puts out attractive purple seed heads in late summer.