Backyard garden plan 2010 Victoria Day

More updates on my simple plan:

Here's the original garden plan. In short, I can probably change the title to "Backyard garden plan 2010-2011".

The Victoria Day long weekend and the week before were the kick-start. We managed to accomplish the following:

• Removed as much lawn from the marked area as possible.
• Transplanted lamb's ears and snow-in-summer to the backyard
• Removed a big portion of forget-me-nots at the front so the star flowers and common thrifts can finally see the sun light
• Planted all new plants (annuals, herbs, tomatoes) in the planters & the voids (due to the removal of plants mentioned previously) in the front garden
• Father-in-law brought Irises from their garden and planted them for us :)

Snow-in-Summer
The survival rate of snow-in-summer by far is not that brilliant. It seems the whole cluster of snow-in-summer mainly depends on few deep roots; the rest are quite shallow and couldn't handle the shock. Let's just hope that the remaining part will thrive next year. I didn't have much faith in its survival the first year it was in our garden but it exceeds my expectation and has taken over a good portion of our front garden.

Picture of the void in the front garden

It is now filled by (starting from the left) Thai basil, marigolds and dills.
See picture here

Lamb's Ears
The progress on removing the lawn is a lot slower than expected (mainly due to the heat and high humidity). I transplanted 5 groups of lamb's ears in front of the dog woods. That's about half of the lamb's ears I plan to move. The other half is still pending. The lamb's ears look droopy over the new location; however, I have faith in their ability of multiplication. If they manage to put down their roots this year, they'll come back strong and conquer the world (back yard) in the years to come.

Although we didn't manage to remove lawn where the IncrediBall hydrangeas should be planted, we decide to plant them first. Just in case this project will really extend into the next year or so. Those two were the only plants which didn't get planted over the Victoria Day long weekend. They were sitting on the porch for one week.
Picture of IncrediBall hydrangeas in the pots

It's going to be a bit tricky to remove grass around them. But at least they are in the ground now. So we can take our time.

Iris
We got few hand-me-down irises from my parents-in-law. They are huge! And, another purple flower in the garden. It wasn't in the plan but it is a welcome surprise. Picture of Iris

Annuals
Vinca Cora Punch in a planter and marigold.

More about the simple plan for the backyard:
Simple plan
Simple plan-revised