Southern style landscape in Oyster Bay

Our clients have a beautiful home in an more beautiful neighborhood in Fernandina Beach with a landscape that was a little tired. As is often the case, their landscape was established in low fertility fill dirt and years of chronic pruning and maintenance had created misshapen, weak plants. They wanted a garden that could stand up to beautiful community landscaping while being low maintenance and durable.

This is a classic southern landscape design. Heirloom azaleas, camellias, gardenias, roses and a beautiful bush form Japanese maple. We worked with the existing yard layout so we didn’t need HOA approval and we topped off all the beds with mini pine bark nuggets to create a thriving landscape that looks like it was part of the original house design.

We chose a plant pallet heavy in slow growing dwarf plants like Camellia ‘shishi gashira’, Podocarpus ‘Pringles’ and Apricot drift roses. This gave us a diverse bloom season while limiting pruning and other plant maintenance. We amended the soil with several hundred pounds of carbon rich compost to increase fertility and decrease disease problems. Finally, we topped off all the gardens with a thick layer of pine mulch to keep moisture in and weeds out!

I love building gardens around a foundation of unique specimen plants. In this garden we found a beautiful Rhode Island Red Japanese maple and several heirloom azaleas to give this classic garden design some legitimate horticultural interest. I’m excited to see these elements mature and evolve as the garden continues to establish.