Why I Oughta...

With the growing season winding down, I'm turning my attention to a couple of things:  chronicling the lessons learned from this past season AND thinking about what I could do NEXT season.  This post is to put down a marker for next year - with something I've come across via YouTube:  Edging.   I've posted some photos/inspiration of edging over the years including this metal edging from Luxembourg Gardens in Paris , this metal vs. brick edging view in 2019  and this boulder edge at a nursery .   Moxie Gardens is a YouTube Channel of a gardener/landscaper who lives in Kansas (I think) and has built a personality-heavy backyard garden with LOTS of unique touches.  One of them is his use of various types of edging.  Here's a video - and screenshot below - that shows how he used 4x6 posts cut-up to different heights to create a curved edging around his patio.  Here's the 275 second mark with this view: Screenshot v ia Moxie Gardens vi...

Over the years, I've created and expanded garden beds using various methods including digging out all the turf, flipping the turf and (more recently) doing some combination of digging/flipping the turf and layering on cardboard to supress the grass.  That cardboard smothering method seems to work pretty well and it is well...easy.  At least it is FAR easier than digging out the turf.  But, the cardboard method has a big drawback - the grass is *STILL THERE*.  So, that means it is tricky to plant in the bed immediately. If you plant in the cardboard zone, you have be careful to remove the turf around any 'holes' in the cardboard that you want to plant in - otherwise you'll end up with grass peeking through around the stems/trunks of whatever you plant.  Trust me...I know.   My problem is that I don't plan ahead enough and get the beds ready BEFORE I want to plant them.  So, why shouldn't I use some of this "Fall Planting" time to build out new/exte...

Last Summer, I added eleven Green Velvet Boxwoods (1# size) at the feet of the horizontal cordon espalier Green spire Linden trees in our backyard - up against the fence.  I bought them small, due to the cost of adding so many of them in one spot and they didn't take up much space.  You can see what they looked like last June in this post .  Spring is when my boxwoods put on growth, so I thought it was interesting to see how much they had grown in a little less than a year.  These were put in at the end of June - with a biosolids and topsoil mix - and I'm thinking put down roots all of 2023.  This Spring - 2024 - the tips of the shrubs have leapt up and out, adding light green tips to the (still) small evergreen shrubs.   Below is what they look like currently - in the middle of the Spring flush of new growth: There are seven in the back row and four in the front.  They may NOT look like much (on their own, in this photo), but here (below) is an ...

I'm racing the Cicada clock on a few projects;  the pizza oven foundation.  And...some of my proposed 2024 Garden Edits.  I wrote a post about a number of 'garden edits' that I want to make and started with the Hakonechloa Macra grasses (the green ones ) around the tree swing.  And, this past weekend, I made another large 'garden edit'.    My mantra for 2024 is 'editing' what I have - and that means a focus on planting in mass (larger quantities of the same varieties) that meet three criteria: 1. They work in our yard. Meaning...they thrive, not just survive. 2. Are appealing (to me). Foliage and Texture are key. 3. Have some four-season appeal. I don't want my garden to be 'empty' in Winter. This edit is on the southside.  And this bed - and in particular - the border/edge of the bed have been a hodge-podge.  Mostly hostas to fill-up space.  And, while I put up a few stumps in my new "stumpery" , I didn't plant anything in t...

Last Fall, I extended (what I call) the IB2DWs (In Between Two Driveways) bed to reach down along the property line, all the way to connect to the small sidewalk-adjacent bed.  In it, I planted a number of conifers ( Conifers Should Come First) , transplanted a few divisions (Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grass and Serendipity Allium ) and tucked in a few other things.  When I made that bed, I was converting it from turf and that meant that I used a combination of techniques:  removing the turf, smothering the turf with cardboard and just leaving some of it in place.  I planted everything in biosolids and then topped the bed with even more biosolids.   But...I mostly focused on the planting.  And left the bed in a not-so-finished state.  That meant that grass was poking through in spots, the edges weren't clean and I applied arborist wood chips.  The chips were intended as an initial attempt to both retain moisture and (hopefully) improve the ...

This past Winter, I identified that we were experiencing some 'sinking' in the gravel walkway on the side of our house .  I put it together using Bluestone Chips and some metal edging, but starting last year, I noticed that the 'level' of gravel seemed to be going DOWN with time.  Looking back, when I installed the path in 2021, I went pretty 'thin' with the Bluestone chips on the path - because I used MOST of them back by the firepit.   Last Summer, I made a couple of trips to the landscape supply yard and brought home 50 gallons of stone that I applied to the firepit area and the side path.  I thought that'd be enough to raise the level of the stone.  But, alas...it still felt like it was sinking. So, fixing this 'sinking' gravel on the path is something I want to take-on in 2024.  I even included it in my 'early look' at 2024 projects .    There are a number of (potential) methods that one could use to try to keep the gravel from sinking ...

Last Summer (June), I extended and (attempted) to clean up the front edge of our 'front porch bed' along the south property line .  The edge had been creeping 'inward' over the years, so I decided to use a shovel to remove as much of the grass as I could, carve off a clean edge and sort-of 'extend' the swoop of that bed a little bit into the lawn.    If you look back at the photos in this post , you'll see a nice, grass-free edge that I planted with bedding plants ( dwarf, French Marigolds ) and Dusty Millers .   By September, the dwarf (French) Marigolds took off and filled in the new border.  They looked great and were thick/full of oranges, reds and yellows .  Behind those annuals went a colony of Summer Beauty Alliums .  Backed by some small Green Velvet Boxwoods to extend the existing short hedge of boxwoods.   All was good last year.   This year, I've already started to clean up this bed - cutting down grasses and rakin...

On Monday, I posted about adding a series of perennials to our front porch beds - including Autumn Moor Grasses and eight Summer Beauty Alliums that are in front of some small Green Velvet Boxwoods (that I planted last month).   As I was planting those, I realized that the edge of the bed has crept-in and I needed to cut the grass that had been growing in there - out.   I've been thinking about the extension of the curved portion of the bed (where the Norway Maple tree *was* and have been musing about how to use some dry-stacked stone there and/or how the bed can be extended down the property line to (eventually) connect with the small, circular bed around the Saucer Magnolia.   But, for now....I decided to just simply clean the bed edge up and extend it out - just a little bit.  Here, below, is the 'after' - a natural edge like this makes the bed look that much more polished.  That (above) is the after.  Here, below is the 'before'.  Q...

We have a bed that lives *right* on the property line in the IB2DWs area that has never had a real, proper edge other than the one that we dug with a spade.  The issue is that there's a little bit of elevation change - by design - between the two properties.  My plan for this season is to make that bed feel a little bit MORE finished by removing some sod, shaping the bed a little bit and edging it along the property line in some way.  This bed runs up against a tiny strip of grass next to my neighbor's driveway, so I'd like SOMETHING to keep the mulch from running/floating over onto their driveway. I've thought about using the green metal edging that I used for our gravel paths.  But, Nat doesn't love it.  She wants something that works with the existing gravel, so I decided to start to keep my eyes open for edging that works to divide mulch beds from gravel and hard surfaces.  It wasn't long until I saw something like this below: And, then...something simi...

Here I was...thinking I'm writing a post that is going to knock a HUGE item off my 2021 to-do list in the yard.  But, when I went to go look up what number "cutting new, larger curvilinear beds" was on the list...imagine my disappointment that it isn't one of the 25 things.  Womp, womp.   But, it is still a big deal for me and a big milestone for the yard.   First, a review of a few things:  Starting with curvilinear bed design .  I covered where I wanted to go with our bed layout and how we had a bunch of "little" curves/bumps in our current beds - while the ideal state is very few, larger, swooping edges.  As Sue from Not Another Gardening Blog pointed out, these big, swooping curves are hard to pull off . I went through three colors of spray paint trying to get the curves right.  And, I think I got them like 90% there - with just a little bit of cleanup having to come in the next few seasons.   Second:  a note about th...

Yesterday, I shared a post talking about the concept of creating curvilinear flower beds in landscape design and how one of my initial backyard projects is to move towards a final shape with our beds.  That requires us to carve up a bunch of the current lawn and creating new beds that jut out into the grass.  But, before I can even begin to think about how to make those swoop'ing, curved beds, there is some thinking that I have to do in in order to get both ready for the days of sod removal AND what has to happen AFTER the creation of the new beds to get them ready and dressed for the season.   To arrange my thinking - and to pressure test on what I want to do - I thought I'd create an individual (for me) order of operations document that details the steps in the order I need to take in order to make this all work.  So, let's go. 1.  Remove our Automower wire.   Around the entire perimeter of our backyard, we have a low-voltage green wire buried about...

We have an easement behind our property that buffers us from the neighbors to the West.  In that easement we keep our 3-bin compost setup and left most of the rest of it to 'go natural'.  The easement runs the entire block and connects the big pond on the south of our neighborhood to territories to the north, so we've seen critters of all types using the easement to navigate. Recently, our neighbors to the West decided to clean up the easement - and it seems that the folks that they hired to clean the place up also worked our side.  They removed a lot of Buckthorn, trimmed up some of the more valuable trees (think Maples and Walnuts) and picked up a bunch of debris that has appeared over the years. They also uncovered a bunch of stones and pavers.  And, (lucky for us) stacked a whole bunch of them up right outside our fence gate.  There are flagstones of various sizes, but also five round pavers and eight square pavers.  These have 'pebbles' embedde...

Post where I initially pondered walking path edging On my post yesterday where I scored my yard/garden activity for the year , I included some initial thoughts about what I am thinking about doing next year.  On that list was to build the first section of the backyard 'path'.  I mentioned that I also need to figure out the edging - because what I start with is what I'll end up using going forward. I recently saw this photo from Laura at Garden Answer where she was sharing the beds out front of her chicken coop and was drawn to the brick edging that she's using. View this post on Instagram Chicken coop area is all cleaned up! Next thing to do is add some greenhouse plastic to the top and sides of their run to give them a warmer, dry place to move around for the winter! It’s going to look so classy... 😆🤦‍♀️ Oh well, happy chickens are more important! A post shared by Garden Answer (@gardenanswer) on Oct...