How about that ornamental garden?

It's been a very long time since you've heard anything about my ornamental garden in the front yard.

A quick review to get you up to speed:
In summer, I solarized the lawn.
In fall, I put down a compost soil mix and then mulch on top of that.
Soon after that planted a bunch of beautiful plants.

I planted:
-gopher plant
-silver ponyfoot
-indigo spires sage
-Henry Duelburg sage
-Berkeley sedge
-blue grey sedge
-lindheimer muhly
-pride of barbados
-red yucca
-firebush
-arbequina olive tree
-firecracker fern
-ghost plant

So what happened over winter?
Old man winter murdered the pride of barbados, 2/3 firecracker ferns, and all the indigo spires sage.
Old man winter tried his best on the Henry Duelberg sage, silver ponyfoot, and the firebush, but the roots survived, and they are growing quickly this spring.
Everybody else had no problem with the temperature.

Obviously there are some blank spots in the garden now. I am resisting the temptation to fill in those blank spots. I will allow the plants to grow into their mature size before filling in the gaps. Every day I walk into the garden excited to see the newest growth or changes. It's an exciting time in the young garden. Come next fall, I will take stock of how the garden has matured, then put some new plants in.

I did a lot of studying of garden design before starting my garden. This town has some amazing gardens, and many have distinctive styles. When planning our garden, Christine told me she wanted a wild looking garden. I like the wild look, but I need some order and hard lines to provide some contrast and visual foundation/starting point. As I look at my garden today, I see that I utterly failed at that.

I grouped plants well in terms of size, but I did not do well in terms of shape, color, and texture. The cool thing about gardening is THAT'S OKAY! I left myself gaps, and more gaps were created when winter killed some plants. I now have room to evolve this garden into more of what we want for our garden. It's so hard to not run to the nursery and get plants to fill those gaps now, because there's some hazy vision for what I want to achieve with my garden. But I am going to be patient and let the garden develop itself over this spring and summer before I insert myself.