Last week, Tom and I visited Oakland Nursery in Delaware, Ohio. Before my hip replacement surgery, Tom and I had a long “to-do” list. I’m not sure what it is about big life events that makes us feel like we need to have all our ducks in a row. You will be hearing more about the things we did in future blog posts. It is a good thing we had a busy September, because I’m going to need something to write about in October as I recuperate.
We have lived in our house for five years now. We have also decided to stop waiting to do things and start just doing them. One of those things is changing up some of the landscaping. Tom trimmed the bushes in September and decided he couldn’t live with the row of bushes in the front of the house anymore. I have complained about them for years. The bushes are scraggly with barely any leaves and are always growing up in front of the window to my office. The spot gets very little sun and I think the bushes that were there wanted full sun.
In our effort to find replacement bushes, we decided to go to Oakland Nursery in Delaware. There are four Oakland Nurseries in the area and they have a great variety of plants that do well in the Ohio climate. We got an ad from them in the mail that included some coupons. So we decided to check them out.
Although we had been to the Oakland Nursery in Dublin, we had never been to the one in Delaware before. We didn’t know we would be stepping in to Jurassic Park! I was surprised and delighted to find dinosaurs everywhere. There were so many dinosaurs, in fact, that I know I didn’t see them all. There were also several staged scenes from the original Jurassic Park movie. Here is me “running” away from the velociraptors. We ended up spending a lot of time walking around just looking at the dinosaurs.
Even though it was almost October, Oakland Nursery still had a huge variety of plants. Tom and I walked by row after row of shrubs. We were looking for something that had a color other than green that would do well in the shade. Tom wanted barberries, but they don’t really like shade. We know because we have several in the shade and they are very scraggly. An evergreen was preferable because we wanted color in front of the house all year.
We settled on a variegated English boxwood, Buxus sempe variegata. We bought all they had – three of them – and then looked for something more tree-shaped to put at the corner of the house. For that we selected a Castle Spire blue holly. I’m not a huge fan of hollies and didn’t want a whole row of them. But one in the corner will be a nice accent. I also picked up a couple of asters to plant in a full sun spot that had a hosta planted in it previously. I don’t know why anyone would plant a hosta in a place that gets full sun.
Checking out at Oakland Nursery was interesting. We had the three boxwoods at $99 each and the holly at $79. I handed the cashier the coupons and she immediately applied the one that gave me $20 off purchases over $200. Because only one coupon could be applied per visit, I told her I wanted to use the one that gave me 25% off one item. She gave us three different totals, one of which was the result of giving us 20% of the total order. I would have taken that, but it was wrong and I didn’t want her to get in trouble. Math.
As soon as we got them home, Tom went to work. He cut down the old bushes and dug most of the roots out of the soil. Then he dug holes and planted the new bushes. My contribution consisted of telling him where to put them and then watering them once they were planted.
The new greenery looks great and will look even better once it gets going. We may go back in the spring to buy a couple more of the boxwoods. Our trip to Oakland Nursery was productive and fun and we will go back.