The Long Road to the Tropical Island

Well - it's been a long road to the landscape island but it was finally finished this past weekend! The weekend before last, we pulled tons of weeds, added fill to the area of the front yard where the tree used to be, and picked out all the plants at the nursery. Jeff gave me a lesson in landscape planning - and I quote him as he rode the golfcart around the garden center - "yeah -what's that? Cool - I'll take 15 of those. Yeah - 2 of those, 7 of those, throw in about 10 of those...do you deliver? Nice - let's do that!" This past weekend, the plants were delivered and Jeff planted them (sadly I had to work all weekend and couldn't be of any help except withthe mulching and watering)! Surprisingly, after the random planning process, we had gotten just the right amount of plants to allow room to grow and fill the space. It's hard to capture it all in one picture, but in general, the island has a big Royal Poincientta on the right, a Starburst on the left, and an Agave and 2 Queen Emma Lilys in the middle. Then it's all surrounded by grasses, foxtail ferns, xanadu, small olive bushes, junipers, and garlic. We also took out a small Live Oak that was beside the driveway before and replaced it with a Screw Pine. We've been assured that most of the plants are drought tolerant so hopefully after they get established, it won't be too much maintenance. Regardless, it looks a lot better than the big dirty hole it's been for a year or with the big "I want to topple over your house" olive tree that used to be there. We got some ferns and bromeliads for the backyard but haven't finished that area yet - more to come....