This should be the year, the second spring after planting, when two dark leafed crape myrtles (‘Rumblin’ Red and ‘Purple Light’, below) grow to make an impact in the lower, rear garden. This area has been unsatisfactorily bare since a large witch hazel and evergreen holly perished as a bare trickle of a spring orienting beneath the garden shed came back to life after a decade of relative dryness.

My eye is most impressed by tall mass, not by tulip poplars ninety feet tall, but by foliage a time or two taller than I am that encloses a garden space. This garden is surrounded by trees and evergreens of varied heights, and one part of the garden cannot be seen from the others with Japanese maples, hollies, or Alaskan cedars shielding the view.

My efforts to replace the witch hazel and holly with moisture tolerant shrubs have failed to achieve this mass, and planted in slightly drier ground I am encouraged that the crape myrtles will do so. I think that the nearly black leafed crape myrtles will be more effective than a green leafed cousin, though I had no idea where the two would be planted when they were brought home. The selection was made solely upon my enthusiasm after seeing larger specimens of these new introductions, but if the still slightly damp soil can be tolerated I think the trees will be key to remedying my recent disappointment with this area of the garden.

I have steered visitors clear of this lower end of the garden, though occasionally pointing to the drier western and northern borders dominated by splendid, huge katsura and blackgum trees (below). The lower garden is also the only view of two paperbushes (Edgeworthia) that spread to twenty feet, well beyond what any visitor has seen, it seems, and here is some implied skill that I must possess though none was required.

In any case, with the crape myrtles soon to provide enclosure, I became inspired to make more of this lower garden than the skimpy planting of moisture tolerant shrubs and a sad, damp and weedy small section of lawn. After weeks of deliberation, the lawn was dug to construct a mounded planting area so that rainwater will drain around the new plantings. Small boulders were dug in along the edges with a fill of soil and gravel that will be planted with succulents suited to sun on one side and shade on the other.

Several trees, a deeply discounted, off color Japanese Umbrella pine (above), a columnar parrotia (Parrotia perisca ‘Persian Spire’, below) transplanted from overly damp ground, and a yellow stemmed ‘Bihou’ Japanese maple moved from a pot on the patio, were planted soon after the bed was prepared. Two peonies that languished along with a yellow leafed mountain hydrangea in too much shade were transplanted, and a week ago a hefty clump of Japanese Forest grass was divided and planted along the edge.

Two very dwarf Japanese maples have been planted, and certainly this should be enough planting in this relatively small area, but of course there is more to come. A very marginally cold hardy Brazilian orchid tree will be moved from the greenhouse. Even with the protection of the unheated greenhouse the orchid tree dies to the ground each year, so instead of a tree it will grow as a shrub, which leaves some small space for another Japanese maple that will anchor the most visible corner as the lower garden is entered.

The vision for this improved lower garden is still a work in progress, with more planting to come, and of course it will not feel complete until the parrotia and maples are in leaf. But also, the dark leafed crape myrtles must leap in growth to provide the enclosure expected to frame the new garden, to possibly turn it from a disappointment to become a favored area of the garden.