The garden: phase two

This is the entrance to the garden from our gate. You can see the retaining wall is in place. Our whovillian homeowners plan to put a rock face on it to hide the concrete and it will be not unlike the wall that lines the back of the yard.

You can see how the mulch dominates, but I'm positive about it because everything I've planted here will fill in nicely as time goes on. This second picture shows that the Astilbe has already bloomed. I've planted into the slope to help retain the soil (and the mulch will help with this too actually). I put in some St. John's Wort which grows a bit weedy out here it seems so I'll have to keep an eye on that next year.
This next picture looks up the walkway towards the grass. I added more rocks to help break up the mulchiness. Within the rocks (although you can't really see it here) I added some alpine plants to fill in around. Again the aim is to eventually diminish the mulch.
Finally, I took this picture that looks up towards the compost bin and does show a bit of the sun that we get in the afternoon. The hydrangea in the foreground shows no signs of blooms yet, but I'm hopeful. That could really add some nice colour to the backyard.

I'll try and take some more photos as the garden develops. A friend at work has brought me some of her perennials that she divided so I'll see what might be a good home for them.