Here's a pic of my overall front yard, awhile ago, before this heat and draught. It's not in great shape now, and needs work...

This bed full of ratty hedges (which I would LOVE to see gone...) is along the front between the door and the garage. It gets some filtered light from morning till around 2pm, then the sun is less intense. That patch of grass stays dead for lack of sun. The Oak tree blocks the sun.


This area (to the right of the front door) is the darkest, because of the two oak trees.I could relocate that row of hedges, as they are in good shape...there's nothing behind these hedges...


Can I plant coleus along the front and around the oak trees?

Thanks for your assistance.

It depends on what kind of oak trees you have, most oaks have a LOT of roots and they can out compete any other plant you put there.
You might build a raised bed around the tree, this must be double walled. as you do not want to cover the roots near the tree. Can not remember how far out you need to come.But if you cover the roots to much the tree will die.
In our kind of heat the coleus will need a lot of water.

Whoa, If I knew that, I would have built a raised bed around my oak tree out by the road a long time ago!! That darn thing throws up so many suckers and is buckling the sidewalk. I'd rather have something different out there. Is a raised bed around my oak tree in the future??? Hmmmmmmm.

If you have a Live Oak or a Water Oak you will have those problems, Be warned that the Water Oak only lives 50-60 years.
Also if you do build a raised bed try to put a bottom on it to keep the roots out of it- not saying that this will work totally but maybe slow the roots down.

My late father would dig up and chop off some of the roots but they would grow back. Our tree died 2 years ago and I am still digging up roots. I am using the large trunk to grow fines on.

Beautiful home, Gymgirl. But yeah, your landscaping really needs a facelift.

I think those hedges, all uniform height and color, look boring. More varied heights and colors would be nicer. You could use a few shrubs, a few perennials, and maybe tuck in a few annuals for continuous color. Try a few good vegetatively propagated coleus, I find they do so much better than seed grown ones. I bought most of mine from Rosy Dawn and they are wonderful plants.
http://www.rosydawngardens.com...

If you visit the coleus forum here, you'll find a lot of coleus experts from the deep south who grow coleus extensively- south Fl, Louisiana, the Carolinas. And they're very easy to grow from cuttings, so you can keep them for years.

Does the area get enough sun for a dwarf (shrub size) crepe myrtle?

Instead of a straight line, would you consider extending the bed in places, making the edges more rounded?

In areas where you have problems growing plants because of tree roots, you could consider adding a few giant pots. Or, add hanging baskets from the tree?

Karen

Here are some updated pictures, taken yesterday. We were out of town for 8 days, got back about a week ago, so you can see that things are badly in need of deadheading and weeding. Temps were in the 90s the entire time we were gone.

My front bed gets some direct sun, but protection from the hottest sun of the day.



Some in my back yard, in full hot sun all day. You can see than some things have fried in the 90+° days and droughty weather, but my sun-tolerant coleus are thriving




Karen

Karen beautiful

Beautiful landscaping, Karen...

Wouldn't it be great if your landscaping could be shipped to Linda's front yard for "instant success"!?

Shoe

Shoe,
I was thinking the SAME thing!!!

Thanks for the compliments. But I'm not that generous- I'm not shipping my landscape to Linda, even if I could!

Karen

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uh, you KNOW I'm kidding, right?

Karen

Karen,
Back to the landscaping project!

Is that an azalea on the left of your backyard steps? I have some unwanted volunteers growing in a flowerbed in the back yard. Rather than cut them up, I could dig them out and put them somewhere along the front. Problem is with the light on the front, because of the oak trees. The bed next to the driveway (with the dull, boring hedges...) gets bright sunshine from the early morning up until around noon.

The other bed along the front wall is shaded all day...

Linda, are you talking about the shrub with hot pink flowers? If so, it's a dwarf crepe myrtle. The tag said it's only hardy to zone 7, but it has survived one winter in my zone 6 yard.

Karen

We have crepe myrtles all over Houston. The dwarf should be ok with protection.

I think mine is supposed to max out at about 6 or 7'. It's beautiful now. I need to get a new shot of it.

Linda, a few pretty crepe myrtles would really make that front garden of yours "pop". (if you get enough sun for them, anyway).

Karen

Thanks, K!
I'm leaning towards your suggestion of some colorful shrubs, too! I think planting the "bones" first, then filling in with the perennials, right?

Just gotta decide on the colorful shrubbery. There's a purple shrub I've seen that, when planted en masse, looks like it cascades. I have no idea what they're called...

So, here's what I like. Tell me if it would work along that front window in the area that gets good, bright sun for about 2/3 of the day. But, not the burning heat, as my front faces east.

Marigolds, geraniums, coleus, lantana, coneflowers. I believe these will all handle my sunlight.

LMK!

Sounds good to me. But remember, coleus in that much sun will have to be sun tolerant ones.

I'm probably not the best person to comment on these things, though. As I've been telling you for several years, I have no idea what it's like to garden in Tx!

Karen