u/Odd_Tumbleweed_5497

I’m suspecting the slugs or Japanese beetles🧐
What pest it can be? What the solutions?
Raleigh, NC, zone 8a

Got 2 plants last year from local nursery (NC, Raleigh area). They were suppose to be Double Down Hydrangea.
They did not have any blooms at that time.
To me its looks closer to lace cap - Pop Star.
What do you think?

We moved into our house in the Raleigh area and the foundation beds were honestly a mess. Overgrown, leggy shrubs from the previous owner, leaf mulch piled right against the siding, and water pooling near the foundation every time it rained.
I thought I could just “clean it up and plant something nice”… but that turned out to be completely wrong 😅
Once I started digging, I realized the water was actually draining toward the house and sitting there.
We ended up redoing the drainage completely, and the biggest lesson was: the prep work matters way more than the plants (plants will struggle or die in soggy soil, and moisture near the foundation is just bad long-term)
Here’s what I learned:

1. Fix drainage first - not later
   We had water draining back toward the house (which I didn’t even notice at first). After the first heavy rain it became very obvious…
   We installed a catch basin surrounded by gravel, plus a drainage pipe from downspot to move water away from the foundation. Without this, anything we planted would’ve struggled with root rot - and it honestly felt risky for the house itself.

2. The soil near foundations is usually terrible
   Ours was hard clay with almost no topsoil. Later I learned builders often remove topsoil and backfill with whatever is there.
   We added around 3 inches of compost and worked it into the top layer by hand (didn’t want to disturb anything too deep near the foundation).
   We used river rock right near the house for drainage, and mulch everywhere else in the beds.

3. Mulch should not touch your house
   I see this wrong everywhere now.
   You need a gap - about 4–12 inches of visible foundation between soil/mulch and siding.
   Otherwise: moisture gets trapped, wood can rot, termites get a direct path.

4. That “small” shrub will not stay small
   Something that looks tiny in a nursery pot can easily be 5–6 feet wide in a few years. Plants don’t read the tag 😅
   We started checking mature sizes and using:
   → half the width + ~1 ft = planting distance from the house

5. Leave space to actually access the wall
   This sounds obvious… but I almost didn’t do it. You’ll need to: clean gutters, inspect things, paint
   We left ~2–3 ft behind the planting and I’m really glad we did.

6. Think about winter, not just summer
   This one changed how I think about planting in general. If everything is perennials, your foundation bed turns into bare mulch for months. We added more evergreen structure (holly, fatsia,sarcoccoca, abelia, etc.), and it looks way better year-round.

This project took longer than I expected, a lot of digging, but fixing these things upfront made everything else easier.
If anyone’s working on foundation beds, happy to share what worked / didn’t - I definitely learned a lot by doing it all.

Seems like a rat snake. Should I be worring? I’m in the garden all the time. Woodland area.