purpleinopp said:Hi & welcome!
IDK the identity of your mystery plants, but wanted to point out that a garden needs a lot of organic matter, from fallen leaves, pine needles, that kind of thing - natural compost. Maintaining a constant layer of that material keeps the ground from drying, and keeps the microscopic (and larger) soil-dwellers alive and able to do their job of performing the decomposition process and moving microscopic materials to a level (and in a form) that roots can use.
Not to worry, there's more where those came from. I'm trying to develope the area to work in harmony with a nearly constant rain of willow leaves and pine needles, it would be silly to try to fight them. But the way it was before was mostly unusable. A large part of it (between the tree line and the house) was already dried out and mostly bare. I'm open to suggestions. Here's a pic of it as it is now. My goal is to turn this into a "green oasis"/woodland garden/healing garden, a place to de-stress. I want it to look natural and put plantings directly into the ground, but in some places that's not practical because of smaller rockery rocks that are just under the surface next to the rockery, so I may use a few containers. The far end I've left wild to serve as a habitat because we've seen racoons using it as a sheltered conduit to get to and from the creek.
The planting method I use that I gathered from talking to more experienced gardeners at nurseries is to dig a hole 2-3 times the size of the root ball, mix 1/2 native soil with 1/2 compost and maybe a bit of general purpose fertilizer, then plant and water it daily, usually in the early evening.
