LOL roxanna - I can identify with all that :-) The garden and the dog are major contributors to keeping me active mentally and physically, so while one part of me says the garden is too big now, the rest of me doesn't want to give any of it up! Hence the use of more hired-out work. Last year we found a garden service business that are actual gardeners rather than just mow-blow-and go folk. They will work with us in the garden, under our direct supervision, doing what we want them to do and doing it our way. That's who will be coming to spread mulch on the paths for us and I may get them to dig out the bridalwreath spirea and maybe (if it still survives....) replace it with the Bobo hydrangea that has been struggling to survive in the front bed in too much sun and too dry soil. Bobo would be happier where the spirea is and, like the hostas, would tie into the other hydrangeas along the garage.

Yeah re the compost end...! :-)

O.M.G., woodyoak -- how on earth did you manage to find actual garden workers??? It does seem that most of the businesses that "do" yard/garden work know very little about plants and their care. Did your workers advertise in any particular way - how did you learn that they were more than "mow & blow" guys? I would SO love to find proper gardeners who would do some of my jobs.

I AM fortunate enough that I have had a garden helper for the past several years. She is about 20 years younger than I and has the stamina and drive of the Energizer bunny -- makes me tired just to watch her! And she is a little careless, due to her speed, as well as lacking in great knowledge of plants, but she's a very willing worker and so upbeat and cheerful, that I don't fuss too much. Anything to save myself the drudgery.

I really must learn how to insert photos on these forums -- my bridal wreath spirea is at least 40 years old, and is impressively enormous, about a 15-foot diameter and maybe 10 feet tall. It came from my parents' place over 20 years ago, and I have just let it do its own thing. Probably ought to hack it back (my mother used to do that to keep it in check) but I never have). Between its loveliness in or out of bloom, and the fact that my catbirds always nest in it, I can't bring myself to prune more than a few errant branches that hang over the path.

Do you think your garden workers would travel to Massachusetts? Lol. I wish.

woodyoak..it's great that you found some GOOD help..it looks so nice..I love that they work with you and that you're in charge..we haven't hired any gardening help yet..we've done everything ourselves other than tree work..I'm 64 and starting to feel older..I think I moved here just in time..I was 50 and had some experience and knowledge..I still had enough energy to create my garden..I'm so happy that the remaining work is a drop in the bucket compared to what's finished..we did a little bit of stone edging yesterday..and I spent way too much time clipping some snowball viburnums..I would love to be out now but it's raining and will be all day..I'll post pics here when I can..

roxanna..I'm also impressed with woodyoak's hired help..I would be a nervous wreck having a "mow and blow" crew walking in my garden..I would rather leave it unkempt!..just start experimenting to post pics..take your time..you'll figure it out..maybe your garden helper could help you..just tell her "I'm not in a hurry..could you help me figure this out?"..

nicholsworth , we do have an outfit deal with the leaves in the fall, and even then I am jittery as they are hard blowers and not very careful of some areas. Ah, well, it beats having to do it myself, which would not be even remotely possible.

Unkempt? One of my favorite words, right along with its opposite (kempt)! My back garden furthest from the rest is beyond unkempt -- it is a veritable jungle of overgrown and weedy plants. I can't keep up, so may either just let Ma Nature have at it -- or get a couple of goats to feast on it all.

roxanna..one of the back corners of our lot is out of control..I had it cleaned up and planted some viburnums, forsynthia and black eyed Susans there..but with "deferred" maintenance lol and too much rain it's almost impossible to walk through..I decided it doesn't bother me..both adjoining neighbors are slobs and I now have all of their weeds..a bonus..my own "jungle" blocks my view of theirs!..90? % of my neighbors hire people for leaf clean up..thanks to my husband we collect and chip..it WOULD be an impossible job for me alone..

We just got back from being out all day....

We found the garden workers we use by accident! DH was photographing last summer in a nearby park and saw two people working in the garden and a truck that said The Perennial Gardener, so he asked them if they do the kind of work we wore looking to hire for and whether they would be interested. They said yes! And they followed him home to meet me and look at the garden.... We've used them several times now and will continue to do so. We had talked with another company that initially sounded promising but then I gave them a list of the DO's and DON'Ts of working in this garden and they said most of the DON'Ts are the things they usually DO for people! We never heard from them again....! When the people come to work in the garden, I give them a list (sometimes in advance...) of what we'll be doing and anything in particular to avoid or be careful with. We then work along with them, keeping an eye on what they are doing and, if they have any questions about what to do about something, they know to come and ask us rather than decide on their own what is right to do. We've had a few small glitches but, on the whole, it has worked out well for us and we plan to keep using them as long as possible. Quite often if we dig out something with the intent of discarding it, they ask if they can have it :-) The guy's mother started the company and I think the discarded plants end up in her garden :-)

When we got home just now, a new neighbour was walking by with a dog he's dog-sitting and then ended up touring the garden with us...! There are definitely a few too-lush (a.k.a overgrown...) places with all the rain we've had :-) And that spirea (which I love - we have two others too...) will definitely be reined in or removed ASAP!

P.S. On the subject of neighbours, I meant to comment and add a picture.... We've always been lucky with our neighbours, both here and at our previous house. Here we have 4 neighbours - one to the north, one to the south, and our lot is not directly ailgned to the properties behind so there are two lots that back on to ours. The neighbour to the north is an active gardener and we chat gardening through the chainlink/wire fence and exchange plants. Our gardens sort of merge along the fence.... Her garden has changed a lot over the years - when we first moved here there were two ash trees shading their backyard - both are dead now and their garden is now a lot more sunny with lots of relatively young plantings! We take each other's gardens into account in some of the plantings - e.g. our dogwood by the shed is early to bloom in May and is very visible to their family room. Then their Cornus kousa dogwood blooms in June and is very visible from our back porch and living room. Then our Cornus kousa dogwood near the fence blooms in July. So, between us we enjoy three months of dogwood blooms! This is a not-great picture of her dogwood in bloom now taken from our back porch a day or two ago:

The neighbour on the south side is elderly. When we moved here, his wife was suffering from cancer and she enjoyed sitting on their patio, watching us work at starting the garden here, and chatting gardening with us through the fence. One of their daughters and her husband lived there with them in her mother's final years and then stayed on until just recently. She also enjoyed gardening and chatting about the garden. Sometime in the next few years we expect that property will sell, be a tear-down, and likely the new owners will be not gardeners :-( Behind us, one neighbour is a garden center owner plus has a garden design and maintenance business. His wife is a 'birder' so shares that interest with my DH! The back of their garden - against the fence - is fairly densely planted with trees and evergreen shrubs so makes a green backdrop to ours. The other neighbour behind us has two small dogs that socialize through the fence - their property has minimal landscaping and is largely left to the dogs :-)

We're quite happy with the immediate neighbours and there are other active gardeners in the neighbourhood that we chat with and garden visit with regularly. Gardens and dogs are good social lubricants in this neighbourhood :-)

our property adjoins 6 different neighbors..one on each side..4 across the back..2 full 2 partials..2 of the 6 are tidy but we have 4 slobs..I think in a wooded area people think "I don't need to do anything..it's just natural"..but there's a difference in beauty between the 3 of us that care (2 tidy neighbors and us) and the 4 slobs..

It looks great - nice job! I'd like to put down some sod over the old bed in the back (I dismantled it this spring), but it would be $$$, DH wants to go the seed route.

mxk3 - we had been overseeding the back lawn every year for the last few years, which helped but we decided that it was time for new sod everywhere - the sunken grassy paths in the front was the biggest trigger (biggest irritant!) so adding soil to raise the path level by about an inch and new grass there was the priority. The back lawn was pretty cheap as the marginal cost of the grass and a bit more labour time was not large as the sod cutter machine, soil, sod, roller thingy,and people had to be here to do the front stuff anyway. It was well worth the cost to us - although the shady lawn in the back will likely deteriorate in a few years - unless the ash tree dies soon and I do want to limb up the oak a bit this winter, which would reduce the shade level.

Here are my projects in the last month...add an arbour in front of my garden shed, add a raised veggie bed (seen to the right behind the arbour) and add a second compost bin in the lower portion of our lot. I then added a new bed which will eventually tie into other plantings and screen the compost bin from view.

You can see from the background of the new bed that we had a neighbour that didn’t care for their property. The good news is that that property changed hands about 10 days ago. The new neighbours have already cut the grass twice, trimmed along the fence line and are working on clearing out the blackberry/alder/horsetail/bindweed/etc mess. We like them already!

#$&@! I just lost a post replying to edenchild.... How do I get rid of ads that pop up on top of where I’m typing and have no X to click on to get rid of them?! It seems to be happing more often lately.

... trying again to reply to edenchild ...

It certainly looks like you’ve been busy! What are you going to plant on that nice, sturdy-looking arbour? What is the wildlife situation in that forest behind the fence? A couple of years ago we had to hastily raise the level of the 4’ chain link fence in our backyard here in suburbia after our miniature poodle had a confrontation with a coyote who came over the fence! If I had a forest that close, I’d probably have a much taller fence, especially if I was growing a salad bar :-) near it. I hope you new neighbours continue to be good property managers :-)

Woodyoak, I have jasmine on the left and honeysuckle on the right of the arbour. Both are doing well for recent plantings - the jasmine just started to bloom.

We have bears and deer in our garden fairly regularly but so far the deer haven’t come close to the house for my veggie garden/salad bar or my hostas and roses. I have 2 golden retrievers so I think the dog smell helps.

BTW, we are in suburbia as well - outskirts of Vancouver, BC. The town bylaws limit fences to 6’ but deer can jump over anything up to 8’ so you are better off using trees and taller shrubs rather than increasing the fence. They apparently won’t jump if they can’t see what’s on the other side. My garden is only 2 years old and is an acre so I’m still filling in as time/money allow.

Jasmine isn't hardy here so I don't know much about it other than it sounds like something I'd like :-) We do grow honeysuckle vines - mainly 'Serotina' now. Be sure to post pictures of the arbour as it fills in over the years :-)

Your suburbia is wilder than ours if you have both deer and bears(!) Coyotes are the main problem here. We have the 6' fence limit here too - I think that's common. The coyotes could go over it if they tried but the additional height is a bit flimsy - it was a 'quick-and dirty' solution a couple of years ago that we've not got around to replacing.... We look to see if any of the fence top is down before we put the dog out because that might indicate there is a coyote in the yard. So far that has never happened. Also, I hope any coyote would react like a friend's dog did - the dog had started to pop over the fence to play with a neighbour's dog! The day we increased the height of the fence, she tried to go over the fence to play with a dog next door - she aimed for the top of the chainlink fence as usual and *smack* into the new wire topping! She bounced off and tried again - same result! She shook herself, looked disgusted at the fence, walked away and never tried it again! Hopefully any coyote would have the same experience! If I was doing a 6' chainlink fence, I'd do the same thing - i.e. put a bar and 4' and then the bar at the 6' top - the 1/3 / 2/3 proportions look good and might help with discouraging jumping in by wildlife - or jumping out by the resident dog(s)!

So, are some of the plantings by the fence destined to grow tall to discourage deer jumping in? Which direction is the bed facing - i.e. I assume, if needed, you've factored in the shade cast by tall plantings along the fence when siting a veggie garden..... ?

I used to want an acre or so of garden - now our 1/4 acre is looking too big :-) *sigh* aging...!

Woodyoaks, I know how you feel - there are some days I ask myself multiple times just why we wanted an acre!

The new bed and the raised veggie bed both face south; the neighbour is on our north side and the forest/riparian area is to the west. The small stream in that area is a wildlife highway and we have coyotes and bobcats as well as the deer and bears. The coyotes and bobcats are rarely seen though.

The jasmine is Jasiminum officinale or White Jasmine. The honeysuckle is Lonicera periclymenum ‘Belgica’. I will post photos as it grows. Here are today’s....

Woodyoak this conversation reminds me of gardenbug from the idyll days. She had a very good helper who came in when she needed it. I was always envious of the help she had in her lovely gardens.

I've always admired your gardens. Looks like heaven to me! Now I'm envious of your garden helpers. Don't worry I'll get over it!

Very glad you found someone who is helping you to keep your garden dreams alive. My garden has shrunk to about 8 very large ceramic pots with a mixture of perennials shrubs and annuals in it. I miss a proper Garden and do not feel ready to say in my early 60s that I'm done with it.

I wish that topped fence idea would work with cats! It's hard to keep cats in the yard so we leash them and walk them that way.

Yeonassky, I may be mistaken, but was it you looking for baptisia? Did you make it to the PNW Garden Show this year?

Hi Yeona! Yeah, I thought the conversation on the thread had a sort of Idyll flavour to it :-). The Idylls are still talking but on Facebook now. I don’t like Facebook so I rarely read it or participate now. gardenbug and her DH moved out your way (to the Island) a number of years ago to be closer to family. She has recently become widowed - but is still gardening and enjoying the climate there. I find gardening in pots a lot of work! DH grows some veggies in pots on the driveway but we reduced the number this year.

Wow woody! Great vision on your part & great execution by your workers. They have been making quick work of it! Really lovely but of course we would expect no less of you. I do love your garden!

Thanks peren.all :-). The crew that did the sod are not the people we’ve been using to help in the garden. The sod people were recommended by a place that supplies mulch, sod, gravel etc. We were surprised that they did it all in one day, especially since they said their crew was short one person (there was three people...). Keeping the sod watered is now the key issue as temperatures are starting to warm up and we haven’t had rain for a couple of days. Later today we will be going up to the place that recommended the sod crew to choose mulch for the paths. The mulch will be spread by the garden workers in the first week of July hopefully - although I suspect DH will probably want to do it himself if the sod gets delivered in the next week or so rather than waiting until July 2!