Time to plant...tired of trying to get front garden "right"
I had a grand plan to turn most of the front yard into a loose interpretation of a cottage garden. I live in an old, plain house in an old, plain town. Since I can't do too much to the house, I thought I'd overwhelm it with a large beautiful garden.
I wanted a big garden, lined with native granite rocks we can pick up from any of the thousands and thousands of acres of fields here.
DH drug rocks home from everywhere. He rototilled the area I wanted. We piled grass clippings, fall leaves, and composted horse maneuvers and straw on the area for three years.
Then I realized the area was far too big. I'd never fill it. I needed to divide and conquer. I sketched out a 6-7' wide curved path down the middle of the original bed, rearranged the boulders, and made two garden areas divided by a wide grassy path. There is an old white spruce tree at the left end of the path and my Purple Martin colony pole at the right in this photo.
I need to tweak the inside outline of the right hand bed, but for now I'm just wanting to fill them up. I can move rocks next spring.
I am in ND, zone 3-4, and here's my rough canvas. The soil is so rich, and soft, and wriggling with earthworms.
This shot above is from the front deck, looking east. DH built the obelisk; it's 27" square at the bottom rung, and is 54" tall. It will have a finial of some sort, once I decide just "what." It is set straight and is perfectly level. My photo makes it look wonky. It will be planted with yellow thumbergia and Jackmanii clematis.
It's very early Spring here, the grass is just greening, the trees are just getting their leaves, and even if I had plants, they would not be up or blooming yet.
Behind the obelisk is a large Marquee Moon daylily just coming up, and there is a Sarah Bernhardt peony in front of it. The rest of that garden is empty.
The right side of the garden has a large bright yellow iris, another Marquee Moon daylily ready to set in the ground, a clump of chives, dianthus in the left corner, and a Stella de Oro lily in dire need of dividing.
The old wood planter will hold geraniums. I want to put two matching peonies at the two gardens' ends closest to the road.
Can you offer any suggestions as to a "plan?"
The only rose I could attempt is the wild-type prairie rose. They are lovely, but I think they only bloom twice.
The common plants do best here - petunias, geraniums, cosmos, dianthus, lilies, peonies, most herbs, etc. We have a vegetable garden on the south side of the house and a hosta/bleeding hearts bed to the north side.
I would love to mix peppers, herbs, and even two or three tomatoe vines in with the flowers.
The photo below is looking west from the road to the garden beds and house.
When DH build the deck/porch area I had planned to smother it with five clematis vines so and asked him to build it up to the door level; he did. Then I learned he was not going to have vines all over his deck. It's been about four years and I still haven't talked him into even one clematis.
Had I known that I would have put the deck area near ground level.
Comments (16)
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7 years agoThank you all! I will be asking more questions. I truly appreciate your inputs.
This is not a new garden; I've been working on it, in various incarnations, for five or more years. This is it's last incarnation! LOL It's just not coming together.
I know part of the problem is the 5-foot tall deck. It's just over five feet and four inches from the ground to the top rail. Since I'm not about to ask DH to carefully take it apart and rebuild it 7-inches off the ground (at least not this year! LOL) I will work with it. There's a chance we'll be residing the house eventually. At that time the deck will be lowered, but I want a nice garden between then and now!
He may be agreeable to some controlled ever greens planted between the deck and the garden. That space is about 7-feet wide, so it wouldn't be crowded.
mnsgal - Ahhh, you understand the rocks! Theses are the rocks that are found all over eastern ND. They are the remains of granite boulders pushed down in the last ice age.
They aren't so plentiful now, but in the 150+ years that farmers have been plowing up all the land, the rocks have been moved to edges of the fields. Free for the picking. They are huge, some come up to my knees. I love them.
There are no flat rocks to be found in the wild, and I certainly can't pay for enough flagstones to go around these two areas. The pathway is about 23-feet down the center.
There is a triple fold of weed barrier cloth under each rock. We dug a trench, put down the cloth, and rolled the rocks into it. There are some weeds that come up, but after a spring shot of Round Up and my DH's weed eating, they really are not a problem. I do need to trim the cloth in places on the outsides of the rocks.
Here is an in-progress shot when we first started this mess...
We later added load after load of composted leaves, grass clippings, barn compost and raised the soil line much higher.
Originally I had this smaller, about 12x15, garden area...
It was much easier to handle. But then I wanted "more." This was not long after planting. Everything grew huge, and wrens nested in the box facing the house.
The first year after expanding the garden, and before setting rocks down the curved center path, we plopped some tomatoes in and had a bumper crop. It was a mess while I was finishing the rocks, our summers are so short, but at least we had some growing going on.
The front door has been replaced, the awnings are gone, and I have new windows! Again, this was before we worked on the curved path that goes from the Purple Martins' pole to the left to the tree on the right. My husband is 5'9". You can see the height of the railing from that.
The early veggie garden is on the south side of the house. He has the truck parked on the grass. He was unloading compost onto the hosta garden on that side of the house.
South side tomatoes, early one season.
Lavender Lass
7 years agoCaroline- Have you considered a kitchen garden? I know you have vegetables on the south side, but what about roses, herbs, a few salad vegetables, some small fruits and annual flowers.
I love a potager/kitchen garden. That's what we're doing in our new garden space. We're zone 4 and there are many roses that do well...but you're right, some only bloom once.
Have you checked Celsiana? It's a damask rose...very easy and so pretty. Not my picture, but gives you an idea : )
caroline94535 thanked Lavender Lasscaroline94535
7 years agoI love all these plant ideas. Most I've heard of, many I've grown, and some are going to open new doors for me! Thank you, everyone!
PeaceofMind - I had totally forgotten cleome. I grew it in California; it got over 5' tall and wide. It's wonderful. Gardening for seven years in California, and then moving to North Dakota is a shock to the gardener's soul. Still, "Bloom where you're planted!" has always been my motto.
Roses; Lavender Lass, NHBabs, and MNWSgal - I'm going to study the roses you suggested. I would love at least one rose in the garden.
Stepping Stones - I'm picking up several large ones today. I have a couple 12" stepping stones in the Hosta garden. While they do the job, I sometimes have to stand on tiptoe with one foot on a stone, then bend and stretch to reach whatever I'm fixing. My old stiff body is starting to rebel at such gymnastics, so more stones are in order.
I checked out a neighbor's large garden the other day. She has pathways of stepping stones through the center, and branching off to the various areas. Her stones are all larger, 16" or 18" in diameter. It's so easy to "walk" through her garden. Once the plants are up you don't even see the larger stepping stones.
Idea stolen! LOL
Restraints and Issues - My front yard is flat; the deck is flat; the front of the house is flat. There is one tall, but puny, white spruce tree to the left of the gardens. I keep all the bird feeders there. They are a source of amusement and joy during the long winters. I sit near the tree in summer and enjoy not only the feeder birds, but the Purple Martins at the end of the garden path.
I drew the outlines of the gardens to miss the tree's shade and keep the garden plants in full sun.
Past the Driveway - I cannot plant anything to the south (left) of the driveway. Wes keeps a 14' trailer and his boat, parked to the left of the garage. He has to pull them out into that grassy area before getting on the driveway. I do have a potting deck and bench against the fence. We measured and tested the clearances before he built it.
Purple Martins - From the spruce tree, on the other side of the gardens, near the drive way, is the only place in our three-city-lot sized yard that I can have the 15' tall Purple Martin pole. It's just visible in the upper right corner of the first photo, and in the background of the "tomatoes" photo.
Their colony has to be 40 feet from trees in every direction; they have to have open flyways; there cannot be tall plants near the pole, etc.
My PMs come first. They arrive every mid-April, raise their young, and leave the first week of August. I have hosted them every summer since 2003. I will try to not go all weepy and happy talking about them, but because of them I can't have anything too tall in the gardens. The obelisk is fine; it's far enough away. The tomatoes closest to the pole was worrying them last year so I'm not putting tall plants past the middle part of the garden. If it came down to the garden or the Purple Martins, the birds would win hands down.
Still I hope to make this a colorful, scented, interesting, balanced, and pretty garden. I want to make the hummingbirds, butterflies, and all the little warblers and wrens happy while they gobble bugs.
Shrubs - I could not put any shrubs in the garden that get more than two or three feet tall. Do you think I could get a sense of "height," "structure," or "design" with shrubs this size? Suggestions?
Steps and Deck - We've discussed putting shrubs on either side of the steps, near the deck area. We both love evergreens and the angled steps make two perfect niches for shrubs. I just need to research what would do best.
I would like them to be no more than 5-6 feet tall; they could be slender, or they could be more conical but no more than 3-4 feet around at the base. I would set them out from the corners so when even when mature they would not look squeezed in.
Wes' main concern with the clematis on the deck is the moisture, and the stringy dead vines all winter long. My beloved Jackmanii could be cut down every fall. I don't know what the problem really is.
I know he would not mind a grouping of evergreens along the deck as long as he could get between them and the rails. If I staggered them and grouped them correctly they could add a sense of a background to the garden. Any suggestions on evergreens?
We would not want to have to prune them.
Winter Interest - I don't have to worry about this. Once the 3'-4', or more, of snow falls, nothing is visible. We put tall orange stakes at the edges so Wes can snow-blow my path to the birdfeeders without hitting the garden rocks.
I didn't have this problem with my California, or Delaware, or Arkansas gardens! :)
Last Spring - This was taken last year on June 6. We had just started planting the veggies; some of the Purple martins had returned and Spring was in the air. We don't plant things before the end of May here. We're expecting snow this Friday.
You can see the areas by the steps where I could put two matching shrubs.
Do you think those two, and maybe three (?) something near the right end of the deck would help give some backdrop/height to the gardens?
I'm moving the flag pole bracket (on front facing left post) to the left of the front door. That will move it back 8 feet more away from the birds. It "bothered" them last year.
Here is most of the front yard. Our yard goes from the privacy fence and white garage on the left, to past the bird feeder tree to the right.
The back yard is just as big, but it's filled with trees, is in full shade all day long, and is the summer domain of the two mostly-in-the-house pups (huge hunting dogs.) No gardening to be done back there. :)
That leaves the right-hand section of the front yard to fulfill all my gardening fantasies.
You can see the other side of the steps which are begging for an evergreen, the tomatoes, and the PMs' gourds. He pulls the trailer or boat out often in the summer. Thankfully not enough that it destroys the grass.
I hope to get a new system for the birds by next spring. I want to elevate the gourds up to 18-20 feet. They'll feel safer, and it will take the gourds out of the line of sight from the street to the house.
From mid-April to early-August my yard is filled with the joy, the wonderful songs and calls, and the aerial flight displays of the voracious flying insect eaters. The ones with the lighter colored chests are the fledges (babies just learning to fly) from last year. The dark "black" (iridescences purple) ones are the males, the ones with dark grey chests are the females.
sally2_gw
7 years agoUser
7 years ago
peaceofmind