Earlier this year, our family worked together to trim down the abelia hedge as part of the first phase of getting this garden bed under control.  You can tell it used to be a beautiful garden bed – a semi-circular hedge of flowering abelia bushes framing a lilac tree that offered some privacy to the bedroom and bathroom windows.  It has gone unchecked for too many years, though, and it needs a lot of work.  Here is how it looked before we trimmed the hedge in February…

And here is how it looks today, now that the abelia bushes have started to leaf in. It already looks better, even though there is still a lot to do!

We had a beautiful evening yesterday, so I worked on this garden bed for about an hour.  There were maple saplings that had been allowed to grow haphazardly for a few years, coming up everywhere, so I got rid of the big ones and started working on pulling the small ones, along with other weeds.  There were dozens of saplings growing in the abelia bushes, about 2-3′ tall, and one growing through the lilac tree that was taller than the house! I pruned those to the ground, and I’m pulling the ones without established roots.

It’s hard work, but it’s also like a little treasure hunt to see what I find.  Under all of the leaves, ivy, and maple saplings, I found more wintercreeper ground cover, the same ground cover that’s in the back bed by the pool.  I know from experience that if I pull the weeds around it to remove competition and let it get good light, it will take over and make maintaining the bed much easier.

Here is how it looks in the back bed…

It completely ate up these stepping stones last summer!

And here are the little sprigs I’m fining in the side garden bed…

Here is the back garden bed after I pulled all the weeds and mulched around the wintercreeper in 2023, and it has thrived!  (Sadly, we had to take down the hemlock trees because they were diseased and dying one by one.  They also made a terrible mess in the pool, but I do miss them.)

So, back to the side garden…  My plan is to clean out around each abelia bush as I did with the one on the far right of the hedge, and then I’ll start working my way back towards the house.  I’ll pull the ivy and weeds and rake up the leaves.

You can see I have my work cut out for me.  It is a mess!

As experienced gardeners suggested, we let the lilac tree bloom before we cut it back.  It was actually helpful to let the leaves come in so we could see what was dead and what was doing well.  We’ll cut the dead branches down to the ground, but we’ll prune the healthy branches.  As you can see, it is struggling and will benefit from a good pruning, even if it doesn’t bloom for a couple of years.

Just imagine the tree trimmed back and the entire bed weeded and mulched.  It’s going to make such a difference!

In addition, we’re going to powerwash the brick, clean off the ivy roots (as we did HERE), prime and paint the trim, add shutters, get new windows, and install a little screen around the propane tank.  It’s ambitious, but hopefully, that will all be done by the end of the summer, and this side of the house will look loved and cared for.

This is the side of the house Jeff and I have been avoiding and dreading, but once we’re literally getting into the weeds, it’s not that bad.  Elbow grease is going to go a long way on this one…