Some ferns would look great there. Houzz preformed magic and made this disappear once so if it reappears twice they did some more magic.

frankielynnsie..I agree that ferns would look nice..the X'd tree is ours..there's an opening by the boxwood going into the yard..I want plants behind the hydrangea to tie my yard together but still leave room to walk..I'd prefer less Houzz "magic"..Lol

Plant something similar on both edges to tie the two sides together. Something bright and bold like montana Aureomarginata.

tj

I'm a sucker for a nice rock! My kids find this quality of mine embarrassing.

tj..so a mirror image..which 2 sides were you thinking?..each side of the hydrangea?..or the path?..

popmama..I LOVE rocks..I moved that rock from my last house! Lol..my teenage nephew and a friend helped us move..those 2 and my husband thought I was crazy..

I love that you brought the rock from your previous house! That makes it extra special. Maybe you could personalize the rock by drawing or writing something on it?

newhostalady..I like sentimental touches in gardens..I saw a guy on a gardening show that had a nice rock for each of his grandchildren with their names carved on it..he said they loved seeing their names..he moved them around occasionally and would have them look for their own rock..I thought it was a sweet idea..

I've had this rock since Sept 1987 when I moved into my last house..it was there when I moved in..I took rocks and plants when I left Lol..I moved them before we put the house up for sale..

Love rocks! My husband does not get the fascination either!

lkayetwvz5..I love rocks more than my hubby too..when we work with rocks he'll say "that's ugly..I don't like it"..but imperfections (in rocks!) don't bother me..they give rocks character right?..

I love rocks too. A new plant and rocks are my souvenirs and they come home with me when we vacation or even a day hiking trip. When we have moved, rocks and plants come with me. My husband has gotten use to it after almost 45 years and helps me select rocks. Some I keep and some I don't--they have to speak to me. We have an elderly lady at church that collects rocks from different places so many of his go to her.

frankielynnsie..that's funny!..just like us you and your husband have different tastes in rocks!..and you give his away Lol..I bet she loves them..when we were working on the big rock a neighbor came over..we talked..he left but came back carrying a rock..gray full of holes..hands it to me..I said "is this lava?"..he says "yes"..I hand it to my husband..he's holding it looking at it and says "did you want this back?"..I was embarrassed..I said "Don give Paul his rock"..then Paul says "I have others..keep it"..so I got a new rock but I don't love it..Don's comment surprised me..

“I love rocks more than my hubby too..“

How do I read that? 😳

By either side I meant of your property line. So if the mailbox is one side and the rock is the other, put them in those two spots. It will serve to bracket what is yours.

tj

tj..Lol.."more than my hubby" does sound funny!..

I thought of using a pair of pots in those 2 locations..but the mailbox plants fill up my land to the left line and there's no room for a pot..but if I plant coneflowers I'll match..I might do that..

Sorry, but I don't have anything else to suggest. I am sure you will figure something out that will be pleasing.

Talking about rocks, I have a few "heart" rocks that I have collected. I think they are cool.

newhostalady..your "heart" rocks are beautiful!.. I don't have any special shapes..my owl is my fanciest rock..

I think almost any additional plant would look fine..IMHO just the rock and hydrangea are an improvement..it will be an easy decision since there's not much space Lol..

I love rocks too! When I’m digging holes and I come across a particularly large one I get pretty excited. My family also thinks I’m loony:)

oursteelers..welcome to the rock club!..our families will just have to put up with having rocks around Lol..

I want to join rock club too! I love rocks! Seems to fit pretty well in your picture. As long as no one tripping over it.

lindalana..welcome!..I think rocks look great in my woodsy setting..the rock's in my yard so it shouldn't be a tripping hazard (didn't think of that)..we did leave space so that it's not too close to the curb..if a car hits it they're a really bad driver..

Beautiful...but I'd want a boulder not just a big rock.

Sue..I'd love a boulder but they're beyond what we can do..I have a big backyard and a small frontyard..in person I like the scale of my rock..I don't have a lot of room in that spot..

I have been a rock hound forever. It is a good thing since I live on the Canadian shield and have an abundance. Add to that my property is part of a 1 1/4 X 1/4 mile wide strip of glacial till. I get rock that has no business being here.

I actually name rocks for what they look like - hedgehog, whale, clam, baseball.....the apartment rock is one of my favorites. It looks like the mountain/hillsides with the natural squares cut out in some exotic place (I can't recall where at the moment). My daughter years ago told me I was such a nerd for naming rocks.

peren..what fun to have access to your own quarry!..well..I haven't given rocks clever names..maybe now I will!..usually it's a description of the rock..like "tan rectangle".."skinny gray".."bumpy white" etc..your way is more fun..and again..another family member making fun of us..

There is a house in my neighborhood that put a lot of really large rocks around the front of their property. It's a corner house. It looked so out of place. The house went up for sale and was sold. I wondered if the people selling got rid of some before selling or the new owners removed some. It looks much better with less rocks. Big rocks need to be in the right spot to look good. Yours is in the right spot nicholsworth!

Also, we had a guest speaker at our horticultural society last year. He spoke about feng shui gardening. It was interesting for sure. One thing he said was that it was not good to have a property at the end of a road (where it meets another road). The thought was that a car could be on the road and miss the stop sign and go right into your house! Well didn't that happen in my hairdresser's neighborhood the night before my appointment. A car went straight through, over the sidewalk, grass, driveway and into the garage! Big damage. The guest speaker said he bought a house situated just like that. To fix the possibility of having a car drive into his property, he put some big boulders on his lawn near the road! Big rocks serve lots of purposes!

He said it was not good to have houses where I have put an "X."

I love hearing all of these enthusiastic rock lovers like myself! Each year I go to the Western slope and go way out in the desert with my uncle to collect larger rocks for our gardens. It's an annual event and I love it. I often surprise myself at the amount and size of rocks I can fit in my small SUV. I often see rocks on the side of the road and comment aloud, "That's a good lookin' rock!" My kids make fun of me all the time.

newhostalady..you make a very good point about boulders as a safety barrier..many years ago (I was a child!) my aunt and uncle's new car was destroyed when a car drove off the road into their yard and hit their car in their driveway..I remember all of the adults talking about it..I don't remember if the driver was hurt (I'll ask my mother)..then years later my widowed aunt living in the same house had another driver drive into her yard..this time the car hit a tree and the teenage girl driving was killed..for awhile her friends would come..they created a memorial in my aunt's yard..she allowed it for a time then finally told them she wanted her yard back and to take the items they put there..large boulders placed thoughtfully might have prevented these accidents..my aunt has passed away and I haven't seen that house in years..I don't know if the current owners have made changes..

thank you for saying that my rock is in "the right spot"..I really like it there..the neighbor told me that she noticed it from an upstairs bedroom and she thought it looks great..

popmama..you are a serious rick hound! Lol..and your rocks have sentimental value since you were rock hunting with your uncle..if you really want to make your kids laugh pretend to rent a trailer and forklift the next time you go rock hunting!..

Popmama, I get my husband to stop and assist me in removing the big rocks that have fallen on the side of the road. (To prevent the mowers from being damaged or injured.) That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. I am bad to pick up "good" junk off the side of the road too. He is a good guy to assist me in my pickings with minimal grumbling and muttering.

frankielynnsie..thank you for keeping our roads and roadsides free from obstructions Lol..

We moved into a new build home 2 years ago and the builder lined our property on one side with big boulders dug up during the construction process. I like how they look in defining our property line, and I usually put the old pumpkins and gourds out on the rock tops for the deer and animals to eat in November. As there was zero landscaping when we bought the house, we scavenged the woods behind our house and found enough rocks to edge a large front bed. I used the lasagna method to create that bed, topped with 60 bags mulch last year. no weeds though!! This spring, I found another cache of rocks on a vacant lot down the street, so I made three trips to fill my trunk with enough rocks to edge a new bed on the east side of the house. Just got it planted and mulched last weekend, again using the lasagna method. I had brought a large potted Atlantis from my old house and decided to split it into 6 pieces and plant them in the new bed, so I am looking forward to seeing them fully leaf out in the next couple of weeks. I brought a few other hostas from my last house and they are planted in the front garden and hopefully they will "leap" this year. The rock edges look at home in the landscape and tie together both beds visually. I am looking forward to sitting back and enjoying the gardens this year, with less work to do!!

Love big rocks but I only have a few that are over 2 feet wide. People pay lots of cash to get large boulders and have them moved into their yards as part of the landscaping. Peren, it's neat that you get a lot of different rocks since you are near glacial till. The rocks that we have in our yard have been carefully moved to fit into the landscape. It helps to have someone who can move them around for you. We have lined our beds with smaller rocks since we've found it looks better than any edging.

I love smaller and medium sized rocks too!..huge rocks are great..but as you said..not easy to work with..

I'm glad I'm not the only one that loves a good looking stone! I LOVE ROCKS! As much as I love plants... Sometimes I think I spend more time in the rock section at the nursery staring longingly at giant boulders. They have these gorgeous pink ones with pyrite streaks through them, and beautiful white flagstones with tons of mica glimmering in the sun... I stare at the holey limestone, thinking a cute little fern would look adorable growing out of those holes. Which would look perfect in our front landscaping near the house to break up the space. Problem is, 14 cents a pound adds up when its a half-ton rock and I need a few of them! My husband just looks at me, with a specific "look" that says "are you done staring at rocks yet?" without saying a word...

Every time I drive by a construction site, with mounds of dirt and natural limestone I'm tempted to stop and ask for some of the rocks. I need to keep a set of gardening gloves in my car...

After my parents built their (downsized) home, I nabbed all the rocks from their newly unearthed property and from the creek that runs through the woods that I could manage on trips home to visit and lined a garden bed with them in my own yard 4 hours away... It drove my husband crazy hauling rocks across the state. 16 years later, we moved and I TOOK ALL OF MY ROCKS! I also dug up and took all of my Japanese iris that my mom had given me, that were from her mom's garden. Every single rock and iris. Luckily, after this long, my husband understood my sentimentality to it all when we moved, but I don't think that stopped him from grumbling under his breath about it when moving the bins of said rocks... Right after we moved in, I was lining the front bed of mulch with my rocks that I had clearly brought with me, and one of our new neighbors came over and expressed a similar sentimentality. He collects rocks wherever he goes and puts them under a tree in his front yard, each one has a story... I shared that all of my rocks from limestone to granite are from various parts of my parent's property that I couldn't bear to leave behind on the other side of town. BTW - the iris are loving their new home and thriving better than I've ever seen them and my grandma's thumb was so green it was evergreen...

Well, now that I've been thinking about rocks, I think I need a trip to the nursery to visit my holey limestone friends later this afternoon.

"we moved and I TOOK ALL OF MY ROCKS!"..I love it!..I'd love to live in a warmer climate and daydream about it..but it's overwhelming thinking about moving..and I don't even know where to go???..
one big comforting thought if I stay here..I get to keep all of the rocks and plants that I put in while living here 16 years..

Such a great story, I got mine from a neighbor and purchased the rest from a local nursery. I have a friend with 20 acres who has friends in the landscaping business who regularly help him move around his boulders with their front end loaders, now that's what I need a friend with construction equipment! lol I love Japanese iris and have purchased quite a few over the years. Mine sit in a bed that's sunny but needs a lot of work to keep them happy, unlike the daylilies that just need weeding, water and of course deer repellant!

@nicholsworth Z6 Indianapolis I often think about moving to a warmer climate, just one zone warmer would make a lot of landscaping dreams come true... If I moved my rocks once, I can do it again!!! Across town or a few hundred miles south, shouldn't matter once they're in the bins! Other than my husband grumbling about the rocks again. LOL

Thinking of zone warmer, my hairstylist has never dug up her canna bulbs that she inherited with the purchase of their home in the fall, and they're totally overcrowding the space their in and they aren't supposed to be hardy for zone 6 so maybe there's hope?

Mine are in pots ready to go outside, but it's too chilly this week again. Yay Midwest! One day 80 degrees the next 40 degrees! They're itching to be outside though, one even bloomed already indoors...

Looking at your photos again and posts, did you ever figure out what to do with the spot with the big rock?

@miles10612 my Japanese iris literally just sit in the sun, I don't do anything extra other than weeding. They're already about to bloom - I'll snap a photo when I run upstairs shortly (I love working from home a few days a week still). When we first bought the house in fall 2018, I had to get them in the dirt pretty quickly so I plopped them all in one bed and didn't touch them for over a year, other than cleaning out the leaves that collected around them. Last spring they had multiplied like bunnies and I divided them spaced them across 4 beds... They're already doubled since last June when I moved them. The area is fairly full sun all day... Perhaps it's Kansas dirt?

Now, my experience with daylillies has been questionable so far... I bought a few varieties of fancy reblooming bare root plants that I put right next to the iris in the fall as soon as they arrived. Some were sprouting, some were dormant but I felt pretty confident with them... I had a few sprout up this spring and now, nothing... either they died or got eaten and died. We have deer in the area, but I haven't seen any - Thinking it may be slugs eating the tender shoots and killing them. I found a HUGE one in the mulch when I moved a stepping stone last weekend. I need to put out the traps already... ugh.

I just took this pic..the nonblooming macrophylla surprised me this year..it leafed out..normally dies to the ground..I cut the dead stems..it grows nice new stems with no blooms..I put it here because #1 I owned it..#2 it'll never outgrow the spot..#3 maybe more light will give it pretty fall color..#4 it softened the rock..after winter it needed more soil..I put stones on the new soil to stop the squirrels from digging..they're temporary..
I like the open ground as it is..it gives me a path on the edge of my property after I get by the big rock..the rock edging is coming out..plain will be better..

Well, send me those edging stones! :) You have a lovely property! A woodland paradise... I think it looks great even with the stones to keep the squirrels from digging, a little finessing and they work well in the space with the rock. (you should name the infamous rock - Dwayne after "the Rock" - geez, that was bad). Those little goofballs are always digging holes in my mulch but they're so entertaining to watch do backflips they crack me up.

I redid one of the rock paths in our back yard last spring, the previous owners tried but didn't do a great job with it, it was just individual stepping stones. I totally redid it, it helped that I found 27 buried stepping stones under inches and inches of mulch all over the back beds that had gotten lost over the years. I found two more this spring, I thought I had found them all last year, walking around jamming a shovel in the dirt every so many inches in what seemed like a natural place to walk... except many were under shrubs because they had grown so much since they had been planted and the placement of the stones. Haha.

I'm going to add to the paths, along the route I frequently walk when traipsing across the main bed. And I'm going to totally redo another rock path that runs along the south side of the house. The previous owners at one point had flagstone stairs built starting from the driveway around the corner and up the side of the house, but the path after it needs some work. It's also individual stepping stones like the other path was surrounded by a ton of pebbles. WHICH MEANS A FEW TRIPS TO THE ROCK SECTION OF THE NURSERY!!!

Here's one of the beds of iris this year, it was about half that many when I divided them last spring after the first bloom. There's three more beds just like it, stepping down the hill but this one shows the buds really well.

Sara..thanks!..we'll have no problem finding a new home for those stones Lol..I love how the stones define the paths..the paths make walking around more enjoyable..pics of more edging..

I love your idea of naming our rock Dwayne!..

I love the paths!!!

Before and After of one rock path - still working on the plants for between the stones. I started with Irish Moss, it worked OK but is a bit fussy... then tried regular moss, that wasn’t right either even though it’s a woodland shady path. Perhaps Creeping Jenny, but I think the chartreuse color is too bright... I may go back to Irish Moss since quite a bit came back already from last spring.

I love your flagstone paths..I have 2 high traffic areas (the back corners of the house) that are bare dirt..stone paths would look great there..on one corner I started piling stones off to the side that I thought would be good in that situation in preparation to put in a path..they're still sitting there..Lol..

I've never grown Irish moss..I Googled it..sounds good to use between your stones..