Our dogwood tree isn’t a traditional dogwood tree. I didn’t know that til several blog readers shared the info with me after I was whining because everyone else’s dogwood bloomed and ours didn’t. It’s called a kousa dogwood or a Japanese/Korean dogwood or several other names.
Now . . everyone else’s dogwood is done and full of green leaves and no blossoms and ours is just blooming its little heart out.
It’s so pretty! This is from our bedroom window and I can’t wait til daylight every morning to open the curtains and see that tree. I’m going to miss the blooms when they’re done but am surely enjoying them while they’re out there.
Hopefully by this time next year, we will have a line of some kind of fast growing evergreens along the property line. The road is there on the side. It doesn’t have much traffic but the trees will give us a bit more privacy. They’re called Giant something and Vince may start planting a few of them this coming week. I think we’re going to plant 20 . . two rows of 10 staggered. There’s a nursery that’s drawing up the landscaping plans so they’ll give Vince all the instructions before he starts digging (through rock).
Stephani in N. TX says
Hopefully not Italian Cypress! It’s your yard, I know. They were a landscapers dream in SoCal and they were planted everywhere. Nice when they are 8-10 feet tall to anchor a landscape, but when they grow past the second story roofline, it’s too late to cut them down at a reasonable cost, and they are Ugleee! They stayed narrow for all the little lots of new builds in CA. Once we paid $1000 to remove (overgrown) trees that we had gotten free so I’m set against planting anything that may need to be removed. Just hearing here in DFW that red oaks and some other commonly planted oaks, may be pin oaks are dying en masse from oak leaf wilt.
Judy Laquidara says
Not Italian Cypress. Oak Leaf Wilt was just awful around Brownwood. So sad to see so many trees dying, especially when they grow so slowly because of the drought.
Pat in SC says
Hope you will have irrigation. Summer is the worst time to transplant trees or shrubs. I can’t believe the nursery is suggesting now. Late fall will be best for the plants.
It will be bad enough on Vince.
Judy Laquidara says
This isn’t a bad time to plant here. Fall would be best but we want them to start growing now and they don’t always have as many in the Fall. I think we need 20 or 30 of them. We get sufficient rain here til probably August and September so, we will have to water a bit but nothing like we had to do in Texas. We will have irrigation for the trees at least til they’re established.
Mary says
Read the tags that give the width and height and add about 50% so you won’t be wanting some removed in a few years. Landscapers tend to overplant to look good now, not worrying about a few years down the road!
Judy Laquidara says
These are evergreen tree experts and we already know the width the trees should reach at full maturity so we’re good. We want them to fill in completely and not leave gaps so it will be more like a fence. We’ll do our own landscaping around the house. They drew up the plans but we’ll do the planting because I agree that too many put things too close together and too close to the house.
Laura Hood says
Am sure they’re talking about Thuja x Green Giant Arborvitaes and I’m very glad you’re aware of the *real* spacing requirements for them. Anything less than 6 feet apart is way, way too close. I sure don’t envy Vince the workout he’ll get! But you’ll benefit from his labor for a long time. Laura
Judy Laquidara says
Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s it. Thank you! We had planned on paying the nursery to plant them but there’s a man near us hwo has recently planted about 300 trees and he said he’d help so Vince may do it with that man’s help.