Hey All,

I know VERY LITTLE about gardening - but I do know, my landscaping looks terrible. I live in a relatively nice neighborhood in a very nice town in a two-year old house. I feel like my landscaping makes my house look twenty years old - how can everything be so overgrown already?? what happened? anyway, here is my question,

I have a smaller flower bed in front of my house with a variety of shrubbery, flowers, and ground cover. I have a couple of varieties of lilies that are taking over - they have spread like crazy. I have butterfly bushes that were great the first year, but were blown over, and didn't grow back well this year, and then were blown over again - they make the whole bed look bad, I think. I also have some saggy butterfly bush looking thing that is not as full as a butterfly bush and is vine-like - it grows wildly. The main things that are making this flowerbed look bad - are the bushes I described and how close together the lillies are (about three clumps of 10 - 20).

In the back, I have a huge flower bed that I started with big dreams - but it is terrible, there are a lot of weeds and not a lot of plants. The plants that are in there are very small because this was their first season.

My husband and I both go to school full-time and work full-time and do not have a lot of time to keep up with these beds right now - but we both graduate this year so things should get better. I'm a teacher, so I can do maintenance in the summer - but during the school year I am drained and do not venture outside often.

With all that background info - here is my question. I have the day off, I am wondering if I would be able to use the extra time to move the things that look ugly in the front yard to the back yard, in an attempt to fill up the holes in that larger flower bed - so it would look better. In the front flowerbed, I think I will look for neater looking shrubs to plant to fill up the space and provide a more solid backdrop for some of the prettier flowers in there. in the back flowerbed, I'd like to move some lillies as well.

Is this okay to do at (#1) this time of the year (fall) and (#2) after a rain (the ground will still be wet tomorrow)?

Thanks for any help/advice!!