Digital Landscaping - The Seniors Center

Do you like those makeover television programs? I'll admit I like to see bad hair and sloppy clothes get transformed, or be amazed by houses that are fixed up and decorated. My virtual landscaping program allows me to do the same for gardens, by just plugging in a photo of an existing space. Actually, the full program allows 3D assembly of houses too, so you could do an exterior renovation of your house while you're at it.

We pass the new seniors' social center nearly every day, as it is just down our street. Hopefully, it is not going to experience the same disappointment as the town's welcome sign, which lingered on for a long time un-landscaped, (though I did offer some stunning and ridiculous ideas with digital landscaping, as posted on my blog). Currently, the building is a nice blue, but very plain. Maybe next year we'll get to see some landscaping to brighten things up. In the meantime, here are my ideas. I think I designed quite a reasonable and low-maintenance landscape. If anyone responsible for this building reads this post, please feel free to use any or all of my ideas!
Seniors Center before the makeover:

Seniors Center after the makeover:

RLM doesn't think that they will cover those posts with brick, seeing no foundation for such a structure. Too bad. Maybe they could build trellises on them and train climbing roses up them? Yeah right. Maybe that's not quite realistic for La Ronge, where the landscaping standards are set pretty low. Besides, someone would have to maintain this.

The plantings in front of the deck include spirea and mugo pines. In the little triangle at the left is a "Diabolo" ninebark.

Along the right side of the building are a dogwood shrub, a gold-foliage ninebark, three highbush cranberry (Viburnum trilobum) shrubs, a bergenia, a dwarf balsam fir, and a mugo pine. In the center of the lawn is my one fanciful touch: a weeping Norway spruce. I just think that it is a really cool tree. At the right are two Lindens, which I think are a perfect tree, having nice leaves, bark, and shape.
A variety of shrub textures and colors:

Nice outdoor sitting area:

The pines and spruce are evergreen, while the dogwoods has pretty twig colors, so as to provide winter interest. The highbush cranberries provide food for the birds (and people, if so desired). Of course, all these plantings are hardy to our area.

If you have a space that could use a makeover, you can send a picture to me and I might post the results on the blog. I use Realtime Landscaping Pro 5, a PC program which is pretty simple to learn and use. It's an entertaining way to waste some time, at the very least!
Other digital landscaping projects on my blog can be found here:
http://zoneonegarden.blogspot.com/2009/07/digital-garden-renovation.html
http://zoneonegarden.blogspot.com/2007/10/3d-virtual-garden-design-hourglass.html
http://zoneonegarden.blogspot.com/2007/06/gardening-goes-high-tech.html

Digital Garden Renovation

There is a patch of flowerbed alongside our driveway that reminds me of a perpetual bad hair day. I spend a lot of time pondering what to do with this awful patch. I don't want to dig it up entirely, since it contains many spring bulbs which are just getting established as good clumps.

I need some larger plants with interesting textures to cover up the dying foliage of the early spring bulbs (mostly Siberian squill). The new plants can't clash with the dwarf lilac to the right, which I just tolerate. The cedar (Thuja) on the left has put strong fibrous roots through this whole area which make life difficult for many plants that have tried but failed to live here.

The cedar shades this spot in the morning, so the plants just get afternoon sun. I used my newly updated Realtime Landscaping Pro 5 program (PC) to get some ideas for new plants in this spot. Here is the proposed design:

The large central planting is a pale/yellow leaf Japanese barberry. Around it are Brunnera, white flowering begonias, a hosta, a green leaf coral bells (Heuchera), and another Campanula carpatica "Blue clips", since that plant already lives here and thrives in these conditions. I threw in a chives behind the barberry, since that plant thrives anywhere. Click on the photo for a closer image.
As an aside, here is my favourite columbine in the garden this year. I believe it is one of the "Songbird mix" plants I started last year. I bought the seeds from Swallowtail garden seeds, from whom I have bought many seeds and always been happy. I like this columbine because of the color, long spurs, and upwards-facing blooms. A real winner. Now I need more good pink columbines...

Welcome Sign and Guerilla Gardening

Welcome to La Ronge, in the future sometime, perhaps. I'm not alone in wondering when our town's welcome sign will be finished.

The sign itself is quite attractive, having been put up last year. It seems that a local committee was given the task of landscaping around the sign, starting last summer. However, the landscaping seems to have come to a standstill. I notice some fresh-looking wood-chip mulch sitting to one side of the sign, which makes me hopeful. What is the plan with the rows of rocks, though?

With only a few minutes and a good computer program, I can transform this welcome sign into something that represents the effects of global warming on the Canadian subarctic...click on the picture to see the high-resolution larger picture. Do you like the bougainvillea, banana tree and bromeliads?

In an attempt to add some greenery to the dusty mess at the side of the highway, I threw some poppy seeds on the heap of garbage and dirt left at a snow dump site.

Good luck, little seeds. If just a few of these seeds grow to flowering plants, they might have a hope of naturalizing, as poppies self-seed. This was my act of "guerilla gardening" for the year. RLM thinks I am crazy. To read more about this social trend, there is a UK website that documents guerilla gardening moments and "weapons of mass beautification".