Great Blooms, New Brooms & Post 31

Some of the jobs we worked on earlier are coming to life with extra vigor provided by the excessive rain and heat of this spring. May we had double the amount of normal rainfall and by June 5th we had already reached our June average. The warm nights are especially good for germinating grass seed, a new lawn we installed on Lake James in late April has already been mowed three times. Lots of blooms are showing from knock out roses to coreopsis , my favorite annual Victoria blue salvia and the Endless Summer hydrangea are especially outstanding.
We have hired two new employees a man with extensive hardscape experience and a woman who was a waitress for the last 17 years, the women said the magic words, "I like to weed," during the interview, she does and she is good at it. Robert, the new guy uses PVC to screed off of for paver installation, I am anxious to see if that method is more efficient or not we always use a 2 x 4", notched and cut to length.


This past week I have been working on a quote and drawing for the Angola American Legion Post 31 the site, building design, ability to water plants post installation and need for low maintenance landscaping make my job more challenging. This long building is set back from the parking lot as much as 23' on one end and only 10 on the other, the foundation is surrounded on two sides by coarse limestone a few inches thick which meets up with the parking lot. It screams, " I need green." There are also some unsightly a/c units on the roof that need to be camouflaged and the vinyl fence that hides some other units needs softened up with some shrubs.
My thoughts were to create some height, hide the less attractive features and remove all the limestone using turf separation on the 23' bed. By the way the parking lot is also from 14-17" higher than the building so we have a unique opportunity to beef up the existing rip rap drainage with a glacial stone dry creek bed, might actually see some water when it rains heavy. For the height I want three columnar oaks two on the left side and one on the right side of the entrance. Boxwoods under the trees left with dwarf zebra grass on the south end. On the north side hostas under the oak, a line of hicksi yews in front of the fence, a Bloodgood Japanese maple with boxwood under plantings. Repeat some taller grasses before using 7 large Chicago Luster viburnum to hide the tan pole building. The sculpted lawn in front of the wide side will provide some much needed curb appeal.

Of course I am in the bidding process currently and a long way from contract signing. Generally when I am dealing with an organization such as the Legion I find it takes a little longer to get a consensus of opinion, often there are committees that need to meet and lots of discussion before jumping into a big project like this. In addition to the foundation planting this Post would like a retaining wall on the north end of the west side of the building. They have also requested a quote for a sign that lays on a hill which can be read from the highway, announcing the post number and name. For that I have contacted Andy who has a graphic sign business in Fremont, he is putting together some numbers for the three foot tall letters, we are providing a quote for the concrete footer the letters will require. I will keep you updated on the status of this project, wish me luck.


Caught this deer munching my flowers yesterday, bad deer.