Fall - A Time for Renewal

4 October 2014

The leaves are starting to fall from the Poplar trees.  Fall is my favorite time of year, for many reasons; not least of which is the weather.  Fall in Virginia is mild, with Indian summers not unusual.  It is a beautiful time to enjoy all the colors nature gives us.  And it is the best time to plant trees.

As is Steve's and my fashion, we do not tend to hurry into things.  We have spent several months mulling over first WHERE we want to plant some trees, and then WHAT types of trees would be best.  We have talked with a few "landscape designers"from local nurseries. We have had a general sense of the areas we want to develop, but have struggled to get comfortable with the right TYPES of trees to plant.  The opinions from the various landscape "experts" varied enough to confuse us more than help.  And our fear that anything we plant will be literally eaten alive by the multiple families of deer that graze and sleep all over our yard and woods has also caused us to hesitate.

Last weekend we went to Merrifield Nurseries, hoping against hope that we would be inspired.  We were ready to buy some trees.  It helps to have a friendly, straightforward salesperson, and we lucked out.  We also discovered this Nursery has much more stock than other places we had been to, with beautiful selections to chose from, even at the end of the growing season.

We ended up buying four trees:

• a Japanese "FireGlow" Maple for the front of the house, to be planted between the entries doors and in front of the Dining Room;
• a Sweet Bay Magnolia for the front yard, to be planted off the corner of the Garage where the driveway bends;
• two "Cloud Nine" Dogwoods, to be planted at the rear side area behind the concrete driveway pad and in-between large Poplar Trees.

The trees were planted this morning!


View from the Mailbox - with the delivery truck in the driveway

They started with the Magnolia.  Steve and I had already marked the locations for them so their planting went very quickly.  For a long time we thought we would plant some kind of evergreen in this location.  But the Norway and Blue Spruce we were thinking of potentially grow to 40-50 feet tall, and almost as wide.  As they mature they lose the density of the branches and just don't look as nice.  The Magnolia we selected has a mature height of about 25-feet, with a canopy of about 15 -20 feet.  Even when it matures, which will be at least 15 years, it will not overshadow the house.  The flowers will be white!  The Magnolia is a real "southern" tree, and seems very appropriate.

 

Planting the Sweet Bay Magnolia

Next the Japanese Maple tree.  Almost from the beginning we have envisioned a small tree in the area bounded by the house facade and our front sidewalk, between the main and side entry doors.  And we have not waivered from the Japanese Maple family.  Our tree is already about 6-feet tall, with a mature height of about 15-feet.  These trees tend to grow slowly, and it's scale already looks good.

It may just be two trees, but they look great, and feel right.

(Hard to see the magnolia)

As we have spent months pondering what trees to plant where, it has made us used to the open, clean feeling of not having a lot of landscaping, and we like that.  I don't think we will overdo the landscaping.  Or it is something that will evolve slowly over time.

Last but not least, the two dogwoods were planted in the back yard, to the east side.  We used to have a couple of dogwoods in this general area, but they did not survive construction well and we removed them.  The new dogwoods have more room to grow now, and they are further away from the drive.  We can see them from the Eating Area, which was one of our desires.

Dogwoods, with Buddha in the background