1,3,5,7 gal shrubs are available. Ask a local garden center if they could get you bigger shrubs.

Please know that bigger is not always better when it comes to woody landscape shrubs and trees. It takes the smaller plant much less time to establish into the native environment, therefore able to burst into normal, healthy growth much sooner than the larger equivalent.

don't do it, especially not with the Rhodie. they have soft roots that are really prone to pot-binding and transplant shock, and a smaller plant has way more chance of surviving (not to mention it's simply easier to dig a 3 foot hole than is is a five-foot hole)

not to mention that a 2 gallon Rhodie around here is maybe $20- and a 4-gallon one is $75 if you get one cheap, I've seen them going for $100, specifically for those folks who can't wait the two years for the smaller plants to catch up.

you could also get Hubby a butterfly bush- one of them should keep him plenty busy for years to come (around here, they define the parameters of 'agressive pruning')

chinacat, I'll look up butterfly bush but DH doesn't do any yardwork at all. I don't do it either but I've been doing it.

Thanks all for advice on the plant size. I was at Lowe's, not a nursery. I didn't buy anything at Lowe's and DH felt they wouldn't be good quality. (Since I don't totally know what I'm doing I'll probably kill everything anyway so I wasn't as concerned about quality at this point).

Haven't seen a plant anywhere near $75 so I'm obviously not in the right place -- yet. Oy.

Ditto on butterfly bush (buddleia). I bought mine this spring that came in a 4-inch pot (the bush was about 2-3 inchies tall) and now (4-5 months later) it's grown to about 3 feet high. I think the 'honeycomb' grows faster than the purple color one. And they smell heavenly too!

if you really think that- then don't buy anything this season. the neighbors aren't going to shun you because you didn't landscape the yard enough, you know...

and I love the rhodies and the azaleas- but they're fragile plants the first year in the ground, need carefully planned homes (theyre picky about how deep they're planted, and need lots of room horizontally to grow) and need very specific prunings done (immediately after they have flowered, and at NO other time during the year) on top of all that- which is a bit much for an new gardener.

I'd start with the question- how much time do you want to spend gardening? how much time a WEEK do you have to do things like tidy, water, and add or move plants?

and what do you like doing vs what do you not like (I like weeding, hate pruning. my husband likes mowing the lawn, hates digging)

AND...what you're looking for in a plant (flowers, shape, color, evergreen? easy to grow? a royal challenge?)

and, last but not least- how big this bed is.

Another vote for smaller plants - I make a point of searching for one-gallon shrubs even when they have a better selection of the bigger ones, because with my gardening style the small ones really do seem to take hold better. (My gardening style includes a lazy unwillingness to dig and properly prepare a hole larger than a certain size, even when I absolutely positively know better, so large plants are pretty much doomed with me.`You may be more diligent.)

Last year I wanted several David viburnums and several dwarf oakleaf hydrangeas but had trouble finding them, so I brought home plants in different pot sizes. This year I can no longer tell which was which.

Burnet

chinacat and others --

Ok here's the deal. We have no neighbors so that's not a factor.

Right now this is for a weekend/retirement home where we spend several days a week but we're not there all the time.

I'm not a gardener and don't basically like much about gardening. I'm really allergic to bug bites so when I go outside I am sprayed down and wearing a net over the hat. It's hideous but otherwise I can't work outdoors.

But I got a very expensive very complex professional proposal for landscaping with plants neither of us liked. That also was expensive to keep up and I cannot do it myself.

So what I'm doing is utility planting, basically. Since I'm not there all the time I'm also planning to put in a drip system on a timer.

We're only planting the front of the house now. The space is 45 feet long and 15 feet wide and there are some tragic shrubs in there. Nothing was planted deeply enough by the PO so lots of the roots were exposed and the bushes never filled out. I've weeded the bed (4 times over) and cleaned it up, turned over all the soil, added topsoil around all the existing shrubs and humus and topsoil in the areas where the hideous ground cover was removed.

There isn't space for a lot of plants. I need maybe 3-4 foundation shrubs in addition to those I have, plus 1-2 rhodos and at most 4 hydrangea (was thinking Annabelles but maybe other whites with stronger stems). I plan to have 1 tree (from PO) moved because it's ugly and we planted a Rose of Sharon too close to it. Also roots are exposed and the space can be used for something more attractive.

We have a deer problem but I've had good luck spraying the hydrangeas and Sharon I planted 2 years ago. No serous incidents so far (keeping my fingers crossed).

I don't mind pruning. I'm about to prune the hydrangeas, in fact. I don't love much of the rest of it. DH is totally uninterested and does nothing.

We both just want it to look "nice" and he's from New England and wants rhodendron and hydrangeas like he had in the house where he grew up.

I only want white flowering plants -- already have blue hyrdrangeas and a pink/purple Rose of Sharon (a gift).

Adding shrubs as sort of a background for the hydrangeas was suggested to me and I didn't figure finding 3 nice ones would be this difficult.

When we went to one nursery DH asked for bigger plants because he thought the white rhodos we saw were too small.

I'd like to get the rhodos and hydrangeas in during the next few weeks so they can root well over the winter and I'm willing to screen them off so the deer don't get to them. But I can wait until spring to plant them.

Meanwhile, I can put in the drip system but it's better to install around the plantings to be precise about the automated watering.

Smaller plants will make the house look sparsely planted since I'm not going for complexity. There's plenty of room for them to spread out as I'm not doing anything cottagey and busy. I basically want something very simple with one big look -- white rhodos (vertical) and hydrangeas.

So, should I go for bigger plants or be patient? My 4 original hydrangeas were small at first and now occupy a 7' circle. They're lovely and we both adore them. Blue.

Is it better to plant now or wait till spring for the rhodos and hydrangeas?

If I confine myself solely to this as a new gardener, can't I just learn the basic drill to take are of what I'm putting in now?

I'm looking to put something evergreen btw some boxwoods in the front of our house. We need it to grow to fill a space of 4-5 feet wide and 6-7 ft tall. We are not big on hollies (traditional leaf style) Any suggestions?