Woodland garden progress

What's this, another pile of wood chips in the driveway? Yes!

I was hesitant to sign up again - at getchipdrop.com - because you get what you get which could be a rather large pile, and I wasn't sure how much I really needed. But I finally decided I needed enough so I signed up and waited about a week and a half. This is a lot, but we can still fit the car in the garage so there's not a big rush to move it and I think I'll end up with a use for all of it.

The first use was to finish covering the whole woodland garden area. Back in February, I showed how the area had progressed from rotten railroad ties to starting to fill in the hillside and planting a maple tree. Many wheelbarrows of mulch later, the hillside is as filled in as can be for now (it'll likely settle as the material decomposes).

At the beginning of the year, it looked like this:

Now a much different look:

Here's the view from the "front", from our concrete patio - the white flowers in front are an eco-lawn mix that I'm testing for use elsewhere in the yard. Behind that, bearded iris are done blooming but delphiniums and lupine continue. Those will all be moved further forward (north/east) to avoid shade as the maple tree grows.

The views from the top and bottom show more of the new plants:

• Gaultheria shallon, salal - 2 along the fence, 4 in the middle above the maple
• Polystichum munitum, western sword fern - 2 near the maple
• Corylus cornuta, beaked hazelnut 
• Vaccinium ovatum, evergreen huckleberry 
• Rhododendron macrophyllum, native rhodie
• Rhododendron 'Lee's Dark Purple', this is the one that's blooming now
• Rhododendron 'Polarnacht'
• Cornus kousa 'Rosy Teacups', cross between the native northwest and asian dogwoods

That's it for now, I don't want to add more plants that I'll need to water this summer. By fall, the grass under the mulch will be dead and I'll be ready to look at more groundcover plants. The tricky part in the short term is that the maple doesn't produce much shade now, so I can't plant anything that must have shade. Everything that I've planted so far can handle more sun, but most is happier in the shade.