'08 Garden Evolution & '09 Plans (Photo intensive)
I thought I'd post a quick recap of our gardening project(s) last year, which didn't seem like much when we were planning it, but looks like a lot now that I look back on it! Last year was our first using a greenhouse, and the culmination of a couple year's prep work in setting up our garden space.
In March last year, we were putting up a fence (to keep my dogs out of the garden), and I was planting bare root roses, which weren't much to look at. Here's what we started with:
{{gwi:254529}}
We moved the raised bed from the year before, and built a second one for a little extra room:
All the mulch is covering an insane amount of weed-mat. That whole garden area was covered with bindweed, and I spent most of last summer weeding religiously to pull up anything that dared pop through the mulch. I think we are definitely making progress!
Then we covered the area in front of the greenhouse with stone, and built two planters outside the door. It's too hot there for the roses I planted, but I'll find something else for this year. That area was all bindweed and grass.
Our veggies just sort of took off, and the extra fence I put at the back of the bed really worked well to tie them up:
The second veggie bed:
The fence-line in July...and *more* mulch:
The "River of Thyme" didn't really start filling in until September, at which time my attention was turning heavily towards our annual Halloween Bash. You can kind of see it in this picture of our zinnias though, which sprang up *everywhere* after I just sort of tossed seed out in the spring:
The mini-roses did well too - I put them all in this little curve of the "river" with our resident gnome:
And of course our little fountain at the end of the "river":
So this year's plans include:
- A "waterfall" fountain feature at the beginning of our river
- We need to figure out how to prune our purple leaf sand cherries, as this is their third year, and time for pruning.
- A two-tiered raised bed in that wide open space on the "other side" of the river that is currently just mulch
- Clematis vines on the fence across from the greenhouse (with the roses & dahlias)
- Better control of the zinnias so they don't shade out my roses. :-)
- A couple rhubarb plants to the south of my original raised beds.
- Another layer of posts on the original raised beds, to increase the soil space. To stop the bindweed, we had to lay weed mat under the beds too, so we need more soil depth in the beds.
- Shade plants for a prepped-but-not-planted garden off the patio
We're also going to start landscaping a couple other areas of the yard...no plantings in those areas this year, just clean up and infrastructure (stone retaining walls to create raised gardens, I think). We're building a shed and want two shade gardens on either side, and thinking about landscaping the back fence line (outside the pictured garden area) as well.
Lots of work...but just looking at these pictures motivates *me* to keep on working! Maybe it will inspire/motivate someone else too?
Thanks for looking... :-)
Jamie (Billings, MT)
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jamie_mtOriginal Author
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