That's some serious work going on there! Nice piece of property for sure. I'll be looking forward to future progress pictures...

Great job! You are off to a great start and every year it will fill in and become more beautiful. It takes a lot of energy and effort to do such a large scale transformation. Kudos to you!

Great job, Thyme2dig, I've loved the photos you've posted of what you did on your front slope, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how your back progresses. It's looking good already, but you're right, once you get grass paths installed, it will really help to define the space.

And now, since you asked....we also redid our back yard this year. We hired a landscape contractor to do all the heavy work and hardscape with a backhoe, but design/layout and all the planting I did myself.

When we first moved in last year around this time, the area beside the shed was completely overgrown with blackberry brambles and weeds. The previous owners hid a multitude of sins behind that piece of lattice. The contractor found an old lawn mower in there!

Cleared out

Today

We have no little ones, so the swingset and play area were of no use to us. We replaced it with a water feature.

Water feature under construction

Today -- I planted that corner with lots of PNW native shrubs and perennials, hoping when it fills in I will no longer be able to see the neighbor's tarps/yard.

Looking from the water feature across to the shed area

Today

New perennial bed, where I sowed Oriental poppies under the milk jugs
{{gwi:459801}}

Today, planted with lots of winter-sown grasses and flowers, as well as some nursery-bought perennials

One last shot of Pennisetum 'Karley Rose' beside the stream

Great idea Susan! Guess I never did get around to posting pics of the new areas I did this spring, LOL. Truth is I sometimes don't like showing pics of certain areas that are not looking up to snuff with me. Some areas arn't fit to be seen, lol.

Love your pictures. Did you and Mike do it all yourselves, or did you have help? It is truly amazing how much better it looks this year from last.

-dawiff, WOW. What a job that must have been! The pond area is spectacular (I am sooo envious!). That must have been quite a feat to get those blackberries outa' there. Love the area you planted in place of them- is that a weeping Alaskan Cedar?

Anyway...this spring I got the ol' spring fever in me and decided to rip up grass for more garden space. Gone with the Grass! We had a very mild spring, so I was able to get out earlier than I would have regular years.
First place I started on was the front shade garden.

Before: pic of shade garden last year. Don't know why I took this at such a strange angle. I swear I hadn't been in the rum bottle, LOL. ;-)

Laying it out...

Today, the expanded shade garden. Doesn't look that great yet. This summer I kind of got frustrated with this area because it dries out so fast. I was sorely tempted to re-seed the area with lawn. But it isn't doing so bad now, so I will probably keep it. Just a mattter of finding things that work well in this kind of area!
{{gwi:743283}}

The second area I did this spring was an island bed around the half wine-barrel planter (covering up a rotted out stump). I am actually very happy with the way this bed turned out.

Before: last year
{{gwi:628618}}

Today
{{gwi:743285}}

{{gwi:743287}}
CMK

All of your gardens are so pretty. And a lot of work went on to get them so beautiful! I love the before and after pics...they are great!

The PNW looks so beautiful with all those graceful pines...jealousy!

Thanks for the compliments!

Christin, that is an Alaska cedar, I've planted three more together in another bed too. The contractor did a good job getting almost all the blackberries out, but he did miss a few roots. I keep digging them up, but they tend to try to keep coming back. I figure eventually I will get them all. Your new enlarged shade garden looks very peaceful. Did you lasagna it to make it bigger?

Krycek, yes, we have lots of Douglas firs in our back yard, they are ginormous! That's why Washington is called the Evergreen state.

This is just an amazing thread.

Thyme2dig- I have been waiting for those photos for almost a year, and what a wonderful transformation! It's better than a serial novel- the anticipation of seeing what happens year to year. The trees are just so big already!

Christin, your garden is true cottage. I love the island bed, and you have given me the courage to propose one to DH.

Dawiff, the scale of your project is amazing. I might do a small bed a year- nothing like what you have taken on.

Thanks everyone, for sharing!
Renee

So beautiful...that water feature is AMAZING!

Thanks everyone!

Renee, we had a delivery of a handful of fairly large trees. Most we could plant ourselves but 2 we had the contractor who did the site work dig the holes for us and then we planted. It helped to get a handful of large specimens back there right away. And then we transplanted a few trees and large shrubs from other areas of the yard. So far they are all surviving!

We've only had 3 shrub casualties and everything else is looking pretty good. We have had a very unusual hot and dry spring/summer. We normally get a handful of days in the 90s, but this year we have had heatwave after heatwave with no rain to speak of.

The backyard project all seems a little insane looking back on it, but then again once I get going on something in the garden it's usually full-steam ahead. I would scatter empty pots around the backyard where shrubs needed to go. My DH would dig holes (yes, I am VERY spoiled....I dug MANY holes myself, just not the big ones!) and then at times I would come home during my lunch hour and plant like crazy, then go back to work! Between last year and this we planted/transplanted 21 trees, 98 shrubs and 37 perennials back there. This fall the perennial planting will begin!! Lots of dividing and moving on my plate this fall so hopefully next year there will be a lot more color back there. It's so much fun!

Dawiff, your water feature is TO DIE FOR! The layout of the whole area is excellent. You must spend many hours on your new patio listening to the waterfalls. The plantings around it look great. Can I bother you by asking if you can post some close-up pictures of the whole pond area and the plants. I'd love to see the details. I'd also really like to know the dimensions of the pond. It is simply a perfect size and we'd like to add a water feature at some point. Do you have any fish?

I would have been very afraid to see what was lurking underneath all those blackberries! That is hilarious that they found a lawnmower hidden in there. What are the wooden bins next to the shed in that area? Compost bins? Or storage? Also are those wrought iron pieces hanging on the other side of the shed? Nice touch and very pretty.

What an amazing change in one year in your perennial bed. It looks like you had a lot of success with winter sowing. Do I understand that you WS the oriental poppies in the bed, or did you sow them this spring?

Christin, the new areas look fantastic!! How exciting to add so much garden space for shade plants, especially when you're always on the lookout for new and interesting plants. The area is so colorful and I really like your house trim color. It really goes well with the garden.

WOW! The kidney bed turned out just great! It looks like a well-established border as opposed to one in its first year! Your grass looks so lush and really sets off the borders.

Did everyone see Woodyaok's thread "In the green garden today" to see her before photo of her house towards the end of the thread? That transformation is phenomenal!

These are great garden transformations. I wish I had taken pictures when we first bought this house, as we look totally different today.

You all have done great jobs with your gardens and they will only get better with time.

FlowerLady

-dawiff, those Alaskan cedars will be beautiful there. There is one in town that is huge- such a lovely texture to it. I actually dug all the grass out there by hand (using shovel and knife). Took quite awhile, but it was so early in spring that I could take my time with it before planting time came around. ;-)
CMK

Wow, Thyme2dig, that is a lot of planting! I've been going at it for the entire spring and summer here too, outside in the garden doing something every day. A lot of work, but a lot of fun too. I used green plastic covered poles usually used for tomato supports to mark where the trees and shrubs would go. It's still looking way too sparse for my taste, but I'm hoping next year and the year after it will fill in more, and then I'll have a better idea where I can put more perennials.

Anyway, here are more pictures. It is not actually a pond, it's a disappearing stream, so it's only about 6 inches deep at its deepest point. Therefore, no fish. The raccoons don't seem to mind the lack of fish, though, they play in it just about every night. I had a 3-foot deep pond with fish at my previous garden, and it was a lot of work. I miss the fish with not having a pond this time, also I miss not having water lilies. But it makes for a very pleasant place to sit.

Here is the view through the garden gate.

Closer, here you can see the stones lining the stream.

Standing at the bend in the stream

View through the Lupine foliage

Japanese forest grass planted beside the falls, I have a lot of this planted around it. Also black mondo grass, and blue-eyed grass (although the raccoons have sat on that and flattened it). I also have a Gunnera, but it is still small.

Samobor Geranium and Persicaria 'Red Dragon'

I hope the pictures helped. It's a very peaceful area, we eat dinner out there almost every night. The birds love the area too, it really attracts them.

The wooden bins beside the shed are compost bins. I love making compost. I bought the wrought iron pieces at Michael's several years ago, hoping to use them somewhere in my previous garden. When we moved here I noticed the shed had no windows, so that seemed like the perfect place for them. I direct sowed the Oriental poppies into the soil in the bed, and then covered them with milk jug tops. I cut the bottom off and then folded back little flaps and stapled them to the soil with those big landscape staples. We're on a high ridge south of Seattle, so we get pretty high winds in the winter and early spring. I winter sowed lots of other stuff the regular way.

Christin, I'm really looking forward to seeing those cedars get big, there is one planted near the Applebee's in town and it's very impressive. I'm trying to keep the area in the corner behind the waterfall a mostly native area. Here's a view that shows the Douglas firs.

Looking up through the trees

Dawiff, I love your pond even more now that I see it's a stream! That is so excellent and I love the rocks/pebbles on the bottom. I would have never thought of doing something like that, but I don't plan to have fish so this is a great option. So the water gets circulated back to the falls? I'd love to know exactly how this works because I have just the spot for something like that in my yard. I can see why you eat dinner down there often. What an absolutely beautiful spot. The plantings look great. I'm sure what you can imagine what they'll look like in a couple years. Gorgeous!

What are you edging your beds with? I can't quite make it out in the first couple pictures but your previous pictures look like the cement from the patio was used? Was there a mold? That is really sharp.

Thyme, yes, the water gets recirculated via a pump at the end farthest from the falls. There is a deep hole at that end for the pump, and because it still needs to contain enough water to keep the pump circulating. I forget how much it pumps per hour. We didn't actually build it ourselves, the contractor who did the hardscape construction did it. But if you Google pondless waterfall or disappearing stream, you should come up with plenty of instructions on how to install one.

The beds are edged with a stained and stamped extruded concrete curbing/edging.

Here's a picture from the construction, that shows the curbing. The machine in the foreground is the extrusion machine. It has a hopper that holds the concrete, and it gets extruded out at the bottom.

Dawiff, thanks for the extra info. I am seriously thinking now about a disappearing stream. I really love the curbing as your border edging. Thanks for sharing all the photos. You have some really great ideas in your backyard. I'm going to bookmark this thread so I can reference back to your garden when we're ready for that next project.

All right, Susan/thyme and the rest of you cottagers. If imitation is the truest form of flattery, I owe so much to Susan for first inspiration, and then some very helpful emails. She even went out and measured her bed for me! So thanks Susan. Wheras Susans front slope is large, mine is quite small. There was a back door into the mud room when we bought the house, but no path or anything to reach it.

From Pictures

So in the fall of 2008, we put in the bluestone stairs so we didnt have to toil up the slope. Theyre gorgeous. Here is what the contractor dug out and piled up to make them. It was the beginning of my front slope bed.

From Pictures

Pictures

He has worked on various projects in our antique (1856) cottage for the last five years. He thinks my projects axeing out stumps ("This is your vacation?"), unearthing rocks, digging (!) are a riot.

This is the way it started about 4 feet deep x 9 feet wide.

From

I started with some of the same shrubs as Susan as basic grounding: barberry, boxwood , hydrangea,and shrub roses, of course, in a kind of W pattern fairy roses near the bottom, and I have to admit, Knockout Blush near the top. They are as advertised. Absolutely trouble free no black spot, continuous blooms even if youre careless about deadheading, full and bushy.

I love boxwood too, so Ive used those, in addition to sedum (just beginning to turn pink this weekend), creeping phlox (was beautiful in the early spring), a juniper, rudbeckia to fill in, and a layer of mixed perennials at the top (phlox, penstemon, agastache, foxglove). Plus some peonies and dark heuchera and penstemon Huskers red in the middle. I love how the dark red leaves and stems pick up the barberry. This year I had some extra basil seedlings so a couple of weeks ago I dug out another six inches at the top and planted the basil. A row of bright yellow daylilies grows in front of the rocks at the bottom. (tho they look kind of droopy by this point.)

Let me tell you about Connecticut earth. When I bought the house someone who lives nearby asked me if I knew the Connecticut state flower its the rock. Stone walls mark and cut across property lines everywhere in my area, and any new-bed creation involves rock excavation. Which makes it not only time consuming but back breaking.

I thought I had a picture of the biggest one from the slope. I couldnt get it out even with a pry bar I needed the neighbor to help. But you can see it below at the lower left. All the rocks at the bottom come from this bed; many others dug out are in the back thrown up on the stone walls.

This is how it looked in the spring (fairy roses in bloom).

This summer I enlarged the bed in both directions it is about 6 x 11 now. In the spring I added an oakleaf hydrangea and I stuck in a butterfly bush that I snagged at Home Depot for $5 last fall because it looked to be on its last legs (or branches). It did weather the winter. With the great soil I've added as the rocks have been subtracted and watering, it is huge. I will have to move it over when fall comes. So here is what the slope looks like now -- at the end of its second summer.

Next year I'll add more roses and a flowering almond and spirea gold mound and Anthony Wetterer at the top. And Ill divide more perennials too I have a hydrangea that can be split that will fill in with nice greenery. For me $$ are really an issue so I have to proceed with slowness. Plus the rock digging. Good thing I like to dig!

Tight finances are the main deterrent to rapid expansion; most all of the perennials are divisions from other beds. Plus I cant afford big, full shrubs. I have to buy small and wait for them to grow. Now at the end of its second season, its filling in nicely. It was -- and is -- a fun project. Plus it is such a sunny spot it seemed a shame there was nothing blooming there.

Please forgive the weird sizing and the font and alignment switch midway. This is my first attempt at posting pics -- it was a bit of a challenge.

Hope you enjoy!
lucia

RE: Garden transformation

• Posted by: thyme2dig NH 5 (My Page) on Thu, Aug 26, 10 at 21:46

Hey Lucia! I'm so glad you posted some photos!! Your slope looks fantastic! Those bluestone steps are seriously drop-dead gorgeous! You did a great job with the plant material and have some nice tried and true easy-care plants. I find that to be most important on a slope. If you ever want to take a ride up to NH, I've been known to fill fellow gardeners cars/trucks with plants!! And I have to laugh because as in CT, the most important garden tool in NH (the granite state) is the pick axe! But we do have such an advantage with having all that rock to use in the garden.

Nice job!!!

RE: Garden transformation

• Posted by: rosefolly 9-sunset 16 (My Page) on Sun, Aug 29, 10 at 0:44

Nice to see all these transformations. You folks are doing a serious amount of work.

R

RE: Garden transformation

• Posted by: prairiemoon2 zone 6a/MA (My Page) on Sun, Aug 29, 10 at 8:47

Just discovered this thread, what a treat! Really enjoyed seeing all the work being done on all your gardens. I'm tired just reading how many plants you planted this summer thyme2. [g] I can't wait to see what it looks like next year. I would love to see a photo of your front yard, since it was mentioned. I think I've seen it before, but another look would be nice.

Nice to have a brand new garden space, dawiff. You must be really enjoying the creative process. Very smart that you used cement interlocking pavers for vegetable beds, so you won't have to replace them when wood rots. Much prettier than cement blocks too. Did you build your own compost bins and are there two or three there?

Silver girl, nice bluestone steps!

CMK, like your new bed around the base of the tree. Looks great!

A lot of, lot of work!

Post a Follow-Up
Your Name:

Your Email Address:

Zone (optional):

Subject of Posting:

Message:

Optional Link URL:

Name of the Link: Return to the Cottage Garden Forum

Hey Lucia! I'm so glad you posted some photos!! Your slope looks fantastic! Those bluestone steps are seriously drop-dead gorgeous! You did a great job with the plant material and have some nice tried and true easy-care plants. I find that to be most important on a slope. If you ever want to take a ride up to NH, I've been known to fill fellow gardeners cars/trucks with plants!! And I have to laugh because as in CT, the most important garden tool in NH (the granite state) is the pick axe! But we do have such an advantage with having all that rock to use in the garden.

Nice job!!!

Nice to see all these transformations. You folks are doing a serious amount of work.

R

Just discovered this thread, what a treat! Really enjoyed seeing all the work being done on all your gardens. I'm tired just reading how many plants you planted this summer thyme2. [g] I can't wait to see what it looks like next year. I would love to see a photo of your front yard, since it was mentioned. I think I've seen it before, but another look would be nice.

Nice to have a brand new garden space, dawiff. You must be really enjoying the creative process. Very smart that you used cement interlocking pavers for vegetable beds, so you won't have to replace them when wood rots. Much prettier than cement blocks too. Did you build your own compost bins and are there two or three there?

Silver girl, nice bluestone steps!

CMK, like your new bed around the base of the tree. Looks great!

A lot of, lot of work!