My garden tour - Patio and Driveway areas

The spring bulbs along the driveway. At the top right corner you can just see a bit of the geraniums. The van is just to the left of this view. When the bulbs are finished there will be an oriental poppy, some creeping phlox, some arabis, but not much for the summer show. There are morning glories in the hedge that need to be constantly killed. I treat them to some round up painted on the leaves, but this never seems to be very effective. I will have to be more diligent, I suppose.
I have a tall cedar hedge that runs from almost the back fence line along between our driveways and up to where the front line of our house. This is excellent privacy. In front of the hedge are some perennial geraniums at the back garage end. These plants are carefree, evergreen ground cover. Tough and reliable. They are just now coming into bud. The van is in front of them so they are seldom seen. At the other end of the hedge there is an opening between the hedge and the moutain ash tree. This is a borrowed vista showing our neighbours' cherry tree in bloom.
This is a very nice statuesque grass like plant. It is going to show up better in the edge of this garden when I have taken out the artemesia. I might replace the artemesia with more of the sedum. Behind this plant and the sedum there are 3 Rose of Sharon shrubs. They look okay when in bloom but otherwise are not that great. They leaf out late, and the fall color is non existant. As you can see in the bottom of this photo, I need to clean up the daffodils that have finished blooming. You can see some of the arabis in this photo. The arabis is doing great in the bottom part of this 5 foot wide strip. I have added some aubretia to the mix and will be adding more this summer for a nice show next spring. Both the arabis and aubretia are evergreen with white blooms and purple blooms respectively. They make a nice ground cover over the dying bulbs. In this area I need to remove a torch lily that is old and ragged. I also need to weed out dandilions, other weeds, blackberries and be sure the rose we took out a year ago stops putting up shoots.
This is a very well behaved sedum. As you can see, it needs to be dead headed. I am about half way finished in cleaning up this part of the garden. I have added 3 bags of the compost to the tulips and other plants along in front of the cedar hedge.
At the street end of the driveway we have a Virginia creeper going up a utility pole. This plant makes a lovely dark green mass in summer and turns to glorious autumn colors. Right now, before it leafs out, you see its winter underwear. This is a silvery ivy growing up through the creeper and slowly spreading up the post for winter color. At the foot of the creeper post we have St.John's wort. This is another very invasive plant but if kept in check and planted in the right place it does real yeoman duty. Its good here contained within our driveways and the street. I have to clip it back every few years. I only got it partially done last fall. The St. John's wort is expanding towards the other plantings along this strip between our driveways. In the bottom left corner we can see the New Zealand flax plant which has not survived our cold winter or the snow it had dumped on it. I will also take out the artemesia that has been crushed by snow load.
These tulips sit below the bird feeder by the garage door and downspout from the eaves.
To continue the garden tour from the woodland area we come past the van and big green compost bin. This bin is emptied once a month and I receive a 20 litre bag of compost from the service I have hired noted in the side bar of my blog. This is the patio area between the house and the back garage. You see the grape vine just coming into leaf. The bird feeder is empty because the starlings have been at it. It took them no time at all to gobble it all up. You get a glimpse of the tulips beyond the garage. To the right in this photo you enter the back garden or go up the steps to the deck.