This past weekend I took out old excruciatingly mature hedges that were over 35 years old .. probably the original landscaping for the house.

Now I'm trying to decide what to put in there .. it has to be low enough so it doesn't detract from the window boxes .. I'd love some ideas.

Here are the before and after pictures:

Hi X,

How's you new bed going? I too have empty beds: front and side of my house southfacing. The original bushes were taken out for foundation work in Nov. I was looking for suggestions too but no one replied.

I like the window boxes; I had a window box planter sitting on the window sills a few years ago.

I purchased some autumn joy sedum and caryopteris longwood blue on clearance from Lowe's and 2 jatropha red and a butterfly bush. Need to figure out how best to plant them.

There are some Mexican petunia, daylilies, turk's cap, crocosmia, paperwhites, violets, orlaya grandifora, Tex. bluebonnets, marigold, and morning glory coming back. Lots of seedlings popping up.

Betsy

Finally got the landscape timbers around it .. I decided to paint them the same colors as the window boxes .. I'm thinking I'll put 3 miniature roses (not the micro minis) in there and some low growing annuals.

Since it's a fairly small area and close to your front door, I like the idea of going with annuals. That way you will have color for many months and can change things up every year if you want to. If you go with perennials, I'd use something long blooming like Butterfly blue scabiosa. It's one of the longest blooming perennials I grow. Keeps on right up to the first heavy frost.

Thanks for your reply! I'm still trying to figure out a plan but I agree annuals would probably be best but don't want to put anything in there to detract from the window boxes .. I'm leaning toward one of the dark ornamental sweet potatoes or maybe even using some small square pavers to make a checkerboard pattern with low growing annuals or perhaps some micro mini roses. Still haven't made up my mind yet .. I almost have the back garden to maintenance mode and when that's been taken care of I'll move on to the front.

A mixture of low growing sedum or succulents might be nice too and you won't have to replant. They would add interesting texture and not distract from the nice boxes.

What is your exposure? Lots of sun, shade, north, east, west, south, etc.? Are you wanting shrubs, flowers, evergreens? Do you like perennials or prefer annuals?

I prefer perennials - the beds faces south west and gets blazing hot sun starting around 9am for the rest of the day. Succulents might be the way to go but are they zone 8 hardy?

Your in a perfect zone and have the right site for sedums and succulents. Check out some of the photos on this page:ce.
http://pinterest.com/thetender...

I think something like this would be nice. Wish I was a few zones warmer and I'd grow something like it.

Actually, it occurs to me, that one of my helpers collects succlents .. I'll let her have at it while I concentrate on the bed by the street!

Wonderful! Can't wait to see what she does with the area. One nice thing about succlents is that they spread fairly fast and are easy to divide.

I love the wide variety of sedum and semps. My autum joy is a real show stopper in the fall

She's stopping by this afternoon .. can't wait to see what she comes up with too!

Check out these photos http://www.bing.com/images/sea... Maybe once spring is over you could use succulent in the windowboxes too for a more unified look. I think they are fantastic.