Gean, I have thought about that, and my ideas on the subject are these: I have no moral obligation to conduct my life so as to avoid possible waste on the part of posterity. How can I know anyway what will happen after I'm dead, and, as long as I'm responsible and positive in my lifetime, why should I worry about it? True, perhaps the garden will end up in the hands of insensitive jerks who will bulldoze it, but on the other hand it may become the property of unspeakably thrilled horticulturalists. If I don't have to sell our place out of financial necessity before I die, it will go to our daughter. There's a good chance she won't want to live here--but then perhaps she will--and I don't think she's going to be a fanatical gardener like me--but maybe I'm mistaken. Or she could marry a husband who loves to garden. Or I could establish a foundation to maintain the garden and keep it open for visits and teaching. I don't know what the future will bring. About the maintenance, I already have more garden than I can keep up with. As I said, the reason I'm in such a hurry now is because I want to get the heavy work done while my husband can still do it: we need to dig our holes NOW, and afterwards the lilacs can grow in peace. I don't see why I shouldn't be pruning roses, pulling grass, and repotting plants when I'm eighty. My desire has always been a low-maintenance garden, without watering system, elaborate fertilizing regimen, or plants that require a significant amount of work on an ongoing basis. Peonies are my kind of plant: once you've dug the holes and planted them, you're basically done forever. I work on getting the soil in good condition and then planting it with plants that will grow well, protect each other, suffocate weeds, and so on: I'm working on creating a relatively stable ecosystem. Obviously it will never be completely labor free, being a garden, but I think I can make a garden that will be able to stand up to some neglect. My garden isn't a financial investment: the money comes from income that's there to spend, not out of retirement savings. I'm like cweathersby: my money goes to the garden, and most of the garden money goes for plants. My clothes come from Goodwill, and I shop there on half price day. The car we drive is the worst wreck in the township. I don't care: what matters to me are the hyacinths I planted years ago that come up faithfully, and to my surprise appear to be seeding as well. I didn't know hyacinths did that. The peonies that are budding now, the snow crocuses that have somehow spread down into the big garden, the wildish area where the Viburnum burkwoodii is getting ready to flower and where the wild hellebore we transplanted two years ago has caught and is growing. The garden is a possible source of future income, all the same. I think it can be a workable display and teaching garden, something our province can really use. I'd hope to earn at least enough money to hire help now and then to keep the garden going. I don't believe I'm going to starve in old age, but I have no expectations of even relative affluence. The garden is an investment in another sense: when I can no longer afford to buy many new plants, I'll have a good supply of material to swap for plants, and to give as gifts. If you can give, you're rich. A final word about bulldozed gardens. Human life is full of waste: I realize this when I see old abandoned houses and barns around here that are fine examples of brick- and stonework and that are collapsing because no one has any use for them any more. Lord help us, just think of war. Yes, my garden may meet a dreary end one day--or it may not--but does that mean it wasn't worth doing? And not just for my own joy. I profoundly believe that my garden is not just for me: I certainly don't deserve such a large and magnificent share of the world's largesse. I don't want to be like the giant who chased all the children out of his beautiful garden so he could enjoy it all on his own. I give cuttings and rooted plants, bits of succulents, bulbs and iris tubers. Even if my garden is destroyed (and maybe they'll miss some of the better hidden parts), it will live on in other people's gardens. When someone comes to visit the garden and see plants she's never heard of, or roses such as she didn't know existed, or a style of gardening that she didn't know was possible--carries those memories away and perhaps puts some of them into practice in her own patch of ground--my garden will live. Permanence--immortality--call it what you will--is not the issue: the patient, fatiguing, and often frustrating cultivation of goodness and honesty and beauty is. To quote Dickens, who is writing about a man's death at the end of a rightly lived life: "It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand WAS open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!" As the actions of the good man live after his death, so the shared garden will never die. Melissa

How that manure/bedding will compost depends on the ratio of manure to bedding. Hence dawncols' advice to read the FAQ. If it composts very hot and smells bad, it needs more browns. If it's slow and the wood shavings don't go away, it needs more nitrogen (greens). If you get the brown/green mix right, mature compost is pretty much the same regardless of what you started with. Once you have good finished compost (it can take as little as 3 months or so if properly balanced) you can till that right in. If you're making raised beds you'll have to add some soil and not just pure compost, because it will continue to decompose and the beds will shrink on you.

this a question that cannot be answered by information supplied. compost is not a defined term. size? texture? water holding capacity? ability to drain? fertility? do the same for the (now composted) manure. and the original soil you are adding to. personally i use about 50% composted manure, 25% pine bark, 10% lava rock crushed under 1/2", and the balance a peat blend under the promix label. that's what i use now given the materials i have available to me. it also changes over time. one year i substituted shredded coconut for the pine bark. results comparable to favorable. one year i had a devil of a time finding an acceptable manure compost...things would be so much easier if i lowered my standards in part, this is an ongoing process and one that has no formula. you know want as a finished product and find the ingredients.and the ratios that meet that end. one year, after moving eight hundred miles i had to find new sources and when i made the container mix, i didn't like it so i added a lot of peat amd a little more manure til i was satisfied. as you do this more you'll understand more about how these things blend and how they hold up to your use. and sometimes you'll use what's cheap and love it and other times you won't. and all the best learming in the world can never substitute for your own experience.

OMG cat litter!!!! Truly, this familiarity with the end results of digestive systems speaks of a deeper (more insane) love of roses than I am prepared to engage with. For a fastidious nation (regarding shower usage and toiletry sales in the US), you sure are happy to grub about in poo!! I have used manure in the past (and definitely never younger than 6 months on an open heap) but usually as a tea since the practice of putting anything around roses, including proprietry fertilisers has always been something of a conundrum because I do not have any visible space. I do not love the practice of heavy mulching since I do not wish to see soil, mulch, hay, bark, and definitely not poo in any form.......I want plants...and more plants....not spaces for fertiliser which can be either dug in at the first or watered on throughout a plant's life. But that's just me. On a less personal note, using manure of any type has become a complete no-no here in the UK unless you are absolutely sure of what pasturage has been used at every stage of a horses (or cows) life and can guarantee no broad leaf weed killers have been deployed. In the UK, we certainly cannot and since most horse-owners have to buy hay at least some of the year, only a fool would risk putting the resulting manure anywhere near their plants.....unless they are completely OK with manure contaminated with clopyralid/amypyralid or any of the later broad-leaf weed killers after 2.4.D. Of course, if you have access to your own horses and own grazing meadows which are unsprayed, then fair enough, but sadly, manure, in whatever form, has become a thing of the past for may gardeners in the UK since we neither trust nor believe farmers to read the tiny print on the labels stating not to be used when hay is going for silage.