Wish List of Plants

When you want to grow a garden, you work with the space you have and plant a diversity of species accordingly.

All shady gardens are not created equal. The density and duration of light vs. darkness influence what kinds of plants can grow in a given place.

So this is a fancy way of saying I can't necessarily grow what I want in the garden, but if I work with what will grow I can have the garden I want.

I am already a big fan of hosta and fern, and have planted a number of them around the cement girl. There is also ivy planted as a ground cover and azalea planted in the wooded bed behind the cement girl and before the road.



I am thinking of adding foxglove- the tall spires have a cottage, old fashioned look. Foxgloves are bi-annuals, so it will be the second year before they flower, but they seed freely so once established I should have a nice bed.





Lily of the Valley prefers dappled shade, grows well under trees, smells like the oil I wore as a child, and promotes peace and harmony.

Torenia, sometimes called wishbone flower, is a charming annual with beautiful trumpet-shaped blooms and comes in a dark blue/purple that attracts hummingbirds.

 

 

 

Atilbe is a rugged and beautiful genus of shade lovering perennial that throw colorful spikes above divided foliage. The foliage is similar to fern, and the flowers are airy and delicate looking, and make good cut flowers.  

This wish list of plants is only the beginning. My garden will be slowing traffic by next fall.

Walkway

The course I am taking at UA and this blog are really helping me to make decisions about our front garden. Breaking the whole front into sections makes it seem manageable, and writing on here, placing sticky notes in gardening books  and pinnig pics to Pinterest has helped me match budget and dream.

One area that we are ready to move forward on is the walkway. Right now when arriving at our home a visitor must squeeze between all of our cars/boats/4-wheeler trailer to get to a short walkway next to the house connecting the driveway to the courtyard. You know, builder basic.

When we began the planning we had no real plans, just a vision of a path to the courtyard. We also had no firm budget or idea of the costs of things.

Mister wanted something made of stone, with moss growing in the cracks and a rustic and natural look.

 

 

Beautilful. Just beautiful. And very expensive. Out of our budget - our walkway would be much longer than the one shown, and of course we would want to have other large rocks laying about like in the picture. 

Then we thought about pea-gravel. It is affordable, easy to maintain, and attractive. We visited a friend who has gravel paths throughout her garden. We sat in her garden and pondered....

What the pea-gravel needed was some large rocks to make it more wow. We ruled that out because what we were really saying was we liked rocks better than gravel- but our budget didn't.

Next we thought about paving the walkway. It would lead to easy access to our courtyard and blend with the driveway. We actually like the idea of a paved walkway. With rocks.

We couldn't get away from rocks. It is more than fatuation...it is love.

Check out what our future walkway will resemble:

 

 



The slope goes downhill from our driveway to our courtyard and front door. We are going to have the flat areas paved with concrete and use rocks at the steps like in the photo above. Love it!

We plan to use the same rocks as used in the steps as a retaining wall/barrier in front of the cement girl. So excited that our front garden is coming together. I know there is nothing to show for it, but we have made a decision!

You may recall I was concerned about wheelchair access to the courtyard. We plan to widen the builder walkway next to the house so that family in wheelchairs can bypass the steps but still enter through the front door. Of course, if one wants to brave the garage that is a no step entry to our home.

I have called a three people to come out and give us quotes on doing the walkway and I have to submit a plan of the walkway to our neighborhood POA, but it feels as if we are on our way to our dream garden.

SWOT and the Weeping Holly

A good way to form a plan is to conduct a SWOT analysis. This is as true of your landscape as it is of your career. A few weeks ago I started the SWOT analysis on my garden. As it would happen, I wrote about the last two items first, making it a TOWS analysis.

Today I am sharing the second half of my analysis, the weaknesses and strengths of my garden, and I have to admit that this portion is much harder to figure out.

Weaknesses of my Garden:

I am not positive on what qualifies as a weakness in the garden, but I think poor soil quality would. We had our soil tested earlier this season and it is slightly acidic (not too bad, we do have lots of pine trees) and hasn't been tilled or amended in ages...possibly ever.

picture of soil here

Another possible weakness is that we are downhill from the road, so we have to plan carefully so that we don't create standing water or lead a creek to our front door.

Strengths of my Garden:

The strengths may be something that only we can see, like a parent seeing the potential in their child. One strenght is the large established trees- they provide shade throughout the summer, give our garden an extablished look, and provide a buffer between us and the road.

pic of trees here

Another strength is the smallness of our garden area- because we are furnishing a small space we can spend more on plants and shrubs that we really love, it won't take as many to fill the garden.

With the established trees on the North side, the house on the South side, driveway and walkway to the East and property line at the West- the future lawn is about the size of a large bedroom, the courtyard is the size of a small bedroom, and the swing area is the size of a foyer. Very easy to work- especially since I have learned to view each of these areas as seperate areas for planning instead of just a vague area "out front."

pics of future lawn area here

 

Courtyard as approached from walkway

 

 

Swing area from inside courtyard

 

No smooth segue, but in other news-
We have added a Weeping Holly to the corner of our house, near the swing. The name is really gross, but the description is hauntingly appealing.

Ilex vomitoria, Weeping Youpon Holly, makes a distinct, irregular, weeping form with its upright crooked trunks and slender, curved pendulous branches.

pic of weeping holly here

The weeping holly is evergreen and has red berries on it. I am already picturing blue birds coming to the garden this winter. We want to plant low shrubs under the double window on the front of hte house, so I measured out their future spots before planting the holly.

Lots of plans...lots of dreams...

Happy Halloween

 

Statuary can give a garden a sense of whimsey. This rat is in the garden at the Birmingham Museaum of Art, stands about 3 feet tall, and is realistically carved with fur, whiskers, and twitchy nose.

 

 

 

 

This blog is about gardens: gardens I tour and the garden I create. Earlier this month I toured the garden at the Birmingham Museaum of Art. I am sure it is a much admired garden, there may even be people who bring their lunch and sit in this garden to relax, but all I kept seeing was this giant rat.

The garden did have unity, a sense of belonging to itself (or to a big rat) and seemed to be laid out on a grid that reminded me of a rat's maze. There was an extremely large woman opposite the rat who matched it in proportion and scale.

Large potted plants provided repetition and sequence, and the pottery gave a bit of color to an otherwise all green garden. Variety was also provided by tree fern's soft frilly fronds in contrast to the stark white walls and huge dark rat.

Unfortunately, the only thing I took a picture of was this rat.

But really, he is all you see.

SWOT Analysis for my Landscape

According to our landscaping class, a gardener should perform a SWOT Analysis on their garden to assess their Strengths, Weaknesses (or limitations), Opportunities, and Threats

We have dealt with what was the main threat in our garden. Our home is on a third of an acre lot located on a busy main road. That means it isn't far for my dogs to run before they are in the road. When someone came to our door I couldn't get them to hurry inside so I could close the door and keep the dogs inside (this is the South; guests must first use a high pitched voice to greet their host, hug everybody's neck, compliment the garden WHILE the front door is open, and make a big show of wiping their feet before entering).

Our threat was the busy road so close to our front door.

We dealt with the threat of the busy road by putting a picket fence around a small area, creating a courtyard. Mission accomplished; threat killed, quaint courtyard born.

Actually, I may be stretching it a little. The courtyard is a work in process. But the threat of my dogs being run over has been handled.

 

Couryard (or dog-catcher), photo taken standing next to the cement girl

Since I accidentally started at the back of SWOT, I will continue in that direction and look at Opportunities next. That's right; I am doing a TOWS Analysis.

Our garden is part of a wooded area, our home is (maybe) a morph between a Tudor home and an English cottage. I love J.R.R. Tolkien. I can give my garden hints of hte 'Shire. That is what I call an Opportunity with a capital O!

The Hobbit

Actually, I do still love the enclosed gardens of Charleston and Savannah; and am not deserting that plan for my courtyard. I am just firming up the over-all plan for our front garden. Most people, when entering my home, comment on the wall to wall, floor to ceiling bookshelves. I think what I mean is that I have the opportunity to create a garden of whimsy, a garden for dreaming, a storybook garden.

Different Ways to Enjoy Flowers

In the last seven days I have done no gardening.

I have driven hundreds of miles to look at gardens, touring everything from the stunningly impressive Birmingham Botanical Gardens...

 

This picture was taken at Birmingham Botanical Gardens, from the belvedere looking into the Hill Garden

 

 

To a tiny jewel of a city garden in downtown Tuscaloosa...

 

 

This garden should be named "Little Alters Everywhere." It was an artistic blending of plants, hardscapes, and knick-knacks...a labour of love.



 

 

Then drove from Tuscaloosa to Atlanta to work a convention of a respectable and awe inspiring organization, where I spent the next three days in the basement of a high rise hotel, looking at floral carpet...

 

When there are no windows, floral carpet can be the next best thing to a garden.

 

I worked 45 hours in three days and was absolutely exhausted when I came home to the best kind of flowers...

 

 

Flowers on my library table!

 

I crashed for 10 hours and awoke fevered and dizzy. Apparently bacteria is flowering inside of me. The doc prescribed Biaxin and rest.

 

Look for a real post addressing view, axis, scope, and other important elements of garden design. Seriously, I took plenty of notes on the tour.

 

Ciao!



 

 

 

 

 



 





A Patch of Green

We have gone back and forth on whether to put on what to put down for a patch of green in front of our home. We discussed the no-mow alternative of Dwarf Mondo Grass; the traditional grass lawn; and one night at the Donkey, fueled by tequila, we tossed around the pros and cons of artificial turf (or indoor-outdoor carpet as we were referring to it that evening).

 

 

The Lazy Donkey in Carrollton. No swag involved, just admiring their grass...

 

About the Lazy Donkey; everyone from toddlers held up on his back by their mothers to margarita drinking mid-lifers jumping on his back as they leave the establishment, the donkey and his artificial turf see a lot of action. The owners tried to grow grass out front, it would look great for a few weeks but nothing they tried could stand up to the heavy traffic. Then they put in artificial turf and it looks great. Really great. People keep squatting down to touch the turf to see if it is real. But we decided we just aren’t that type of gardener.

Mister didn’t love the idea of Dwarf Mondo grass but said that if I loved it we would plant it. I don’t love it as much as I love the idea of not mowing, but he pointed out to me that I would have to pull weeds and rake. On thinking it over I decided I might as well mow.

So that brings us to our current plan for a patch of green. No surprise, no wow factor, just regular old grass.

Found this pic on the web

I reached out to our local Master Gardener’s organization for advice on what grass to grow. They gave me a bit of a quiz about the sun exposure and they tested the soil. Our future patch of green gets 4 hours of direct sun a day (more in winter) and is enclosed by pine trees on the north, walkway on the east, house on the south, and trees/neighbor’s house on the west. Our soil tested acidic at 5.4pH.

The Master Gardener recommended a tall fescue blend for our patch of green. Fescue prefers soil to be 5.5 to 6.5pH, will grow with our amount of sun, and is (I am told) easy to seed.

Instructions for establishment:

Incorporate 15 pounds of 10-10-10 per 1000 square feet into the top 4-6 inches of soil prior to seeding. In November and February, apply 3 pounds of 34-0-0 per 1000 square feet. Follow this program for the first year, and then use the maintenance recommendations.

Instructions for maintenance:

Apply 8 pounds of 10-10-10 per 1000 square feet in September. In November and February apply 9 pounds of 16-4-8 per 1000 square feet. In May, apply 1.5 pounds of 34-0-0 per 1000 square feet.

You remember that cranky old lady from your childhood, the one that watched from her front window and stomped out the front door if you got too close to her lawn? Yea, that will be me soon...

 

Picture from webiste "I Can Has Cheezburger?"