Springs further changes...

Spring brought many surprises not all of them well received. But one that came in the disguise of spruce needle rust cast.  I spent a few weeks having a pity party about the lose of privacy that they provide from the front of the property and neighbors driving by. Then the designer in me kicked in and I decided that seeing that the option is to leave it looking like this picture I spent several hours the past couple weeks not only pruning the affected branches, dead trees and then raking up the accumulation of spore covered dead needles.

If you ignore the Peter Pan moment going on you will see that perhaps this is actually going to create a whole different depth...one of which I am happily going to embrace.

This reminded me of what Karen from Quarry garden and stain glass went through when she had to limb up her spruce.

The challenge that could be interesting is that this front bed will actually rotate through waves of primary colours of blue, red, yellow, orange and white.  Behind it is a bed that has softer pastels shades of blues, purples and pinks.

 This is a Rhododendron that sits at the end of the perennial bed behind the pond.

There are still a couple small piles of needles to pick up and then edging around joining this with the perennial bed to the right of the Rhododendron  I have a few ideas of what to do under these trees which I will share in future posts.