A couple years after her family moved into their New Jersey home, Heather Thomas was anxious to get a garden started. She dreamed of transforming the sideyard previously dedicated to a kids’ play space into a garden destination where perennial borders remained colorful from spring through fall. When they removed a tree growing too close to the house, this spot near the kitchen window was the perfect place for the future garden’s entrance.
Heather installed the arbor at right and began digging up the Japanese pachysandra that had surrounded the tree. To ensure that the tenacious ground cover didn’t repopulate the garden later, Heather left the area fallow for a few weeks so she could easily catch new sprouts as they appeared. A month later she brought in the first plants: peonies, daylilies and roses.
To prepare a
