Saturday, August 20, 2005

Finally Finished My Garden



More or less...it's always a work-in-progress, but I put a few more plants in and added mulch, which to me, means it's completed. Until something dies and I have to yank it up and replace it. Or until I see some cool fall plant that I think might look interesting. But for now at least, I'm out of money and out of energy. Two things you should know about me: 1) I don't know anything about gardening, 2) I don't have the attention span to learn - just let me play in the dirt, and 3) I have a "black thumb."

There's no rhyme or reason at all to my hodge podge of plants. I don't like to spend a lot of money (see #3 above), so I buy plants on sale or at the end of their season when they're reduced 75% and hope they'll re-sprout next year. I've actually had pretty good luck with this.I started my first garden at this house when we first moved in 4 yrs ago. This garden is in front of my living room window. I added a second garden in front of my front porch 2 years ago.

This summer I got the crazy idea to pull up the scalloped garden edger and build a retaining wall instead. And while I'm at it, why not make the gardens bigger.In May, I had the double split retaining wall stoned delivered by Lowe's. I spent a week moving my sidewalk, which is limestone rocks. I raked and raked those little buggers until I cleared out enough space to make a semi-circular garden that extended an additional 3' feet away from the house.

After that, I worked on the porch garden. Rather than ending at the edge of the porch, I decided to extend it to the edge of the house. This entailed ripping up a considerable amount of my lawn so I could built my retaining wall - this one is a little serpentine shaped. It looks nice (I think). The photos of my two gardens before adding mulch (if I did it correctly, the photos are clickable thumbnails so you can view a larger pic).

2 comments:

~d said...

The garden LOOKS beautiful...what do you mean Home Depot delivered...is that the light colored stone "wall" I see? and, and...did they PLACE it for you, or did you place it?

Elle*Bee said...

Actually, I was mistaken. I ordered it from Lowe's (they charge a $55 delivery fee to my house). Yes, it's the 'wall' that was delivered. I put it up myself. According to the directions, you're supposed to completely bury your first level of stones, but my ground is so full of clay that I couldn't. I had to dig a trench, level it, add leveling sand, and put the stones in. I used the level a lot for this project. I only did two tiers and it seems pretty stable (knock wood). It was a bit of a pain but I felt a sense of accomplishment - esp. since I did it by myself while Andy was at work.