There are evergreen deciduous trees and I have no idea what any of them are. Huge evergreen deciduous trees just don’t grow in Utah. I also found this shrub in flower. In January. So super incredible for Utah-grown me.

Being in an apartment, I doubt I’m going to actually work in the soil. But it intrigues me. Not good soil, but it also has some of the opposite problems that Utah soil has–acidity and quick weathering due to humidity and heat.

Another thing that I’ve noticed lately is using pine needles as mulch. It’s always been on my list of items you could mulch with, but I didn’t realize people actually buy pine needles in large quantities and use it for more than just around a pine tree. Here are some bales they just spread out all over around my apartment complex.

Some landscaping blunders are the same, however. My apartment complex has some landscaping that is trying to be fancy, but is really just the overuse of hedge clippers. Even the trees are hedged into nice little prickly squares. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, it could be the desired result of intensive formal landscaping. But that requires a lot of knowledge and work. More often it’s done by people just imitating that, and results in these hedges:

The bottom of the hedge is starting to die out. When pruning a hedge it has to be pruned in an gradual, upside down V shape. That way, light can reach the lower branches and they won’t die back.