GARDEN DETAILS



WELCOME TO THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF MY GARDEN...

Saturday, September 25, 2010

The Tropics on Alkai

Whenever I drive I keep an eye out for other gardeners who are pushing the boundaries by planting exotic plants in their yards.  I feel a kinship with these folks who enjoy the challenge of trying to grow bananas, palms, cannas, and other tropical plants in the Pacific Northwest.  On a recent drive along Alkai in West Seattle I spotted some yards that made me feel like I was driving along a road in Southern California, or Spain.  I stopped and snapped some pictures of these creative flights of fancy and thought I'd share them with you here.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

THE COURTYARD GARDEN



While I like the location of my house and garden, if I could change anything it would be the distance that the house is from the road and also from my next door neighbor. Our house sits on a two acre lot, but the person who built it located it about 30 feet from the road. True, he did create a berm, which is an overgrown mess at the moment, but with all that land why would you put the house right on the road? Then there's the next door neighbor. He's about 20 feet away from the north side of our house. Not only that, when we moved in there was no fence between the properties. The neighbor's dog regularly made visits to our back yard to do his business until finally they put up a fence. Unfortunately, they put the type of fence you would place around a corral, which offered no privacy to speak of but does do a good job of keeping horses out of our yard.

The previous owner had also poured a long slab so he could park his RV behind the house and hook it up to the septic tank and electricity. We made the best of an ugly situation by setting up a basketball hoop when the kids were young and using the space for an outdoor court. However, the kids finally grew up and left home and the ugly slab seemed like it had outlived it's usefulness. When the Seattle earthquake struck in the late 90s the slab cracked in several places and became not only ugly, but also uneven. So finally we got sick of the lack of privacy and the ugly slab and decided to do something about it.

The first thing that had to go was the ugly slab. We decided to retain the part that wasn't cracked as bad, which coincidentally also supported part of the deck. I dealt with the rest of the slab by hiring my son to use a jack hammer to break up the concrete and then to haul the rubble to the back of the property. Once the concrete was gone I had some top soil hauled in to fill the area that the concrete had occupied. I then hired a Bobcat from the local equipment rental company and used it to spread the top soil, which turned out to be a big mistake, which I didn't discover until much later. The adventures of my Bobcat driving day is a whole story in itself, which I will save for another occasion. Let me just say that it involves an attempt to dig a pond and a very large wasp nest.

At any rate, the courtyard is nearly complete. it's taken three years more or less and more money than I anticipated, but we are pleased with the outcome. Of course, it's turned out different than I planned, but circumstances dictated that we make some changes. When I began, I wanted to build a pond, which could be seen from the living room and enjoyed from the patio. I began digging and discovered that once you got past the fill dirt I had brought in, there was hard pan, which had to be broken up before it could be loaded into a wheelbarrow. At some point I began thinking, "Do I really want a pond if I have to hand dig the whole thing?"

At that point I decided on a water feature rather than a pond. I found a piece of basalt which had a concave top and decided it would make a perfect bird bath. Water would be pumped up from a hidden reservoir through a bamboo pipe and trickle over the side and back into the reservoir. Moving a several hundred pound rock into place forced me to do come creative thinking. At the landscape supply yard the man merely picked the rock up with a fork lift and put in in the bed of my truck. I had thought that if I could get it out of the truck and onto the ground I could pick it up with a heavy duty hand truck designed to carry up to 800 pounds. In order to get it out of the truck I used an engine hoist belonging to my son. I wound a chain around the rock and hoisted it up, drove the truck out from under it and set it on the hand truck. I then discovered that I couldn't even budge the hand truck and if I had managed to get it moving, it would have sunk up to the axle in the soft dirt. So I hoisted the rock back up, pulled my tractor and wagon under the rock and lowered it into the bed of my little wagon. I was able to pull the wagon around and into position and then had to drag the engine hoist over, hook it up to the rock again and lower it into place. I was really pretty proud of myself. Of course, if I hadn't built the fence before I placed the rock I could have used a Bobcat to lift the rock and to do a lot of digging and eventually hauling gravel, but that's one of those things you learn by doing.

One plant that I definitely wanted in the courtyard was bamboo. We made a trip to Jade Mountain Bamboo down near Puyallup and bought a Phyllostachys aureosulcata f. spectabilis, which was recommended by the owner as a fine specimen plant for a courtyard. It was a great pick! In spring it puts out the most spectacular culms, which are purple and lavender. Some culms also have a tendency to bend, so that here and there are shoots with a crook in them.

Of course, the man also mentioned that you have to use an in ground barrier or else it would run all over the yard. We purchased 16 feet of heavy duty vinyl barrier, two feet wide. it was back to digging again as we began constructing a trench for the barrier. About 18 inches down we hit water, so a revision in plans was called for. We mounded the dirt up and then dug the trench. at this point we had one side of the planting area nearly a foot higher than the rest. Again we changed course and created raised beds on each side with a channel between. We covered the channel with gravel and rocks, constructing a dry stream bed leading from the basalt rock. It was finally beginning to look like something besides a mud hole.

Next, rocks were called for, so I spent a couple of days arranging and moving and rearranging rocks. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, this property has very few rocks available. At my last house, all you had to do was dig a bit and you would strike rocks, some of them as big as automobiles. Here, all you strike is clay and sand. A friend of my wife wanted to get rid of some rocks at the new house they had bought, so we went over after work and picked up a load of rocks. That was still not enough, so it was off to visit the man at the landscape yard and I purchased some special rocks, (at least they must be special since they cost so much) to complete the job.

I have always admired Japanese gardens, so the plants I selected reinforced the look. We added a dwarf Azalea (White Moon), a Prostrate Canadian Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis 'Coles Prostrate'), a fern (I moved these around so much I can't remember what I ended up with), and some grass (Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola') for a total of five main plants. The ground cover presented another problem. I wanted something that looked like moss, but it had to thrive in the sun most of the day. I looked and looked and finally found a plant at the West Settle Nursery known popularly as Australian Astroturf (Scieranthus biflorus). It fits the bill perfectly, although it got hammered by a week in December of sub-freezing temperatures last winter. Still, it survived and will hopefully fill back in the part killed by frost.

With the planting completed , we stood back and admired our work. It looked great until we turned and looked at the other end of the courtyard next to the house. it would take another year of digging and moving dirt, hauling in gravel and sand and finally setting pavers, to complete the courtyard.

I have just finished setting plants in the beds around the pavers this past week. The plants for this section called for some creativity. One side has sun from the south for most of the day and is planted with, a Mexican Blue Palm (Brahea armata), Dwarf Agapanthas, Ornamental Orgegano (Origanum r. 'Kent Beauty'), a passion flower vine (Passiflora incarnata), and Honeysuckle vine (Lonicera sp.) The end next to the house bakes in western sun all afternoon and the soil is sand and gravel. It is planted with Sempervivums and a dwarf Cistus, all of which love the heat, don't mind the poor soil and are drought tolerant. The side next to the deck is in deep shade almost all day. It features Black Mondo Grass (Ophiopogon lilaceae), Himalayan maidenhair fern (Adiantum venustrum), a Calla Lily - Green Goddess (Zantedeschia aethiopica), a Persicaria and a Peltaboykinia watanabei.

There remain some finishing touches, such as a gate (who would have thought finding a gate would be so difficult?) some lighting etc, but we are enjoying the courtyard garden even more than we expected and can hardly wait until summer when we can spend more time out there.

Finally, a big thanks to my wife, Joyce, who spent numerous hours helping me dig, dig, dig, and to my son, James, who was drafted on summer afternoon to help with what else, digging.



Tuesday, March 31, 2009

THE BIRDS



When I was in junior high school Alfred Hitchcock produced a film called "THE BIRDS". In the movie the birds go berserk and start attacking people, pecking at them, beating on them with their wings, clawing at them and crapping on them (although Hitchcock doesn't show the last part, I'm sure the birds would have thought of that part first) Anyway, we walked around for weeks after we saw that movie looking suspiciously at the birds.

Flash forward, and here I am spending money trying to attract birds into my garden. Last week I bought hummingbird syrup, black sunflower seeds, two more feeders, and some more suet blocks. The week before I bought a better hummingbird feeder, more seed and a case of suet blocks.

All of this feeding really has paid off, but one thing I discovered right away. As much food as you want to put out there, they will eat. Not only that, but they must spread the word around because I'm now filling the main feeder twice or three times a week and the suet three or four times. I'm also a little worried about the single humming bird which has discovered my new feeder. He ate so much the other day I was worried he wouldn't be able to take off. He did make it, but only to a tree branch where he sat looking all bloated (if you can imagine a bloated humming bird) This little guy goes by the name Rufus, and he's kind of orange with a bright, irridescent red throat. I was standing about two feet from him looking out the bedroom window when he flew up, which brings me to another point about this whole bird thing.

I'm getting old! I mean I can't think of a past time that defines old age better than sitting and watching birds. Now, I know there are serious bird watchers that crawl through the mud to a blind to watch and photograph birds, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about sitting in the comfort of the bedroom or deck with a drink in hand watching the birds come and go and maybe dozing a little bit if I'm so fortunate as to have sunshine. Be that as it may, I really find I like it. It's a little bit like people watching at the mall. You never know what you might see.

Anyway, I tried taking a few pictures of some of the birds that were attracted by the feeders and now I'm thinking I need a better camera. You see how quickly this can get out of hand? I mean, most birds are so small and I can only zoom in so much and get so close without frightening them. Doing a little research on line I've discovered that the prices for the recommended cameras for really serious bird photography are pretty frightening. So, the pictures I'm posting are not nearly as good as they could be, but they are far better than trying to tell someone about the cool Pileated Woodpecker we saw last Saturday. As the old adage goes, one picture is worth a thousand words. So rather than writing another few thousand words I'm going to post a couple of pictures taken lately.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Saturday, March 28, 2009

ZONAL DENIAL


Compared to the economy my garden fared pretty well this past winter. On the other hand, this is one of the worst winters I've seen in the past 30 years and a quick walk through the flower beds between showers reveals plants that may not make it.

Of course this is because I suffer from a terminal case of Zonal Denial. According to the FDA Port Orchard is in zone 8b, and what with global warming I figured maybe a few palm trees might be appropriate. For awhile there I saw palm trees everywhere I looked around Seattle and even Port Orchard.

For the past few years we had mild winters and then early in December we were hit with a snow storm, which dumped 18 inches on the garden, followed by days of temperatures below freezing. In fact, it got down into the teens on a few nights.

We protected the most fragile plants with little tents, which made the back yard look like a campground. However, there were some plants that were just a little too big to cover. In the corner of the upper garden was a large phormium (native to New Zealand) which had finally developed into this six by six foot giant with olive colored leaves with pink edges. It had become one of my favorite plants this past summer, but now it looks like it may be dead. Right next to it is a Rosemary plant that Joyce bought at Costco a few years ago. It was a little topiary that she got at Christmas time shaped like a miniture Christmas tree. After it started looking bedraggled from being inside I transplanted it outside where it grew into a sprawling clump of fragrance covered with blue flowers for part of the summer. All but a small bit of it is dried out and brown. I have my doubts about the survival of this plant. Funny thing is, there is another Rosemary on the other side of the Phormium and it's fine. Go figure. Could be a different variety, or maybe the other one had better shelter.

It goes to show, we take risks when we make assumptions about global warming. In a place like Western Washington we may have colder winters and rainy summers as a result of climate change instead of warmer weather in general. And I think I kind of knew all along that my garden is closer to being in zone 7 rather than 8 because of the altitude and the distance from the water. Still, even within the confines of the garden, there are colder places than others. Little microclimates where that palm will do just fine and maybe the Phormium would have survived.

Part of what I like about gardening is that there is no sure thing. That, and the fact that change is constant. If something doesn't make it, then an opportunity opens up to fill the spot with something else that may do better. I think I'll try something from Siberia this time though.

WILL THE SUN EVER SHINE AGAIN?

I am sitting here watching a steady downpour through the windows in the living room. I'm
ready to get my hands dirty, but winter just won't let go. I think I saw the sun last week for a couple of hours before it started raining again, but of course the weekend is here, so it must rain or it wouldn't be Puget Sound.

I compulsively check out the weather report in other parts of the country and find out that the sun is shining in Spokane, Valencia, Los Angeles and no doubt in a million other places that aren't Seattle. I've got a long list of garden tasks to complete, including getting some vegetables planted, pots of plants out on the patio that need to be set in, pruning, trimming, raking, mowing etc etc. And here I sit blogging about my garden instead of working in it.

An article I read in Garden Design magazine the other day on Global Warming / Climate Change, informs me that while they will be able to grow Magnolias in New York and that they will need to plant more drought tolerant plants in the south, the Northwest will change the least, except it will probably rain more around here. I think I'll start a moss garden. I've already got a good start on the garage roof. All I have to do is pull it off the roof and let it grow on the ground. Oh, and the horse barn now features both moss and ferns. Green roofs are all the rage these days. Fortunately for us, all we have to do is nothing and our roofs grow all kinds of plants without any work on our part. I'm picturing my yard as something like the Olympic Rain forest in years to come. Of course it is beautiful, but oh so wet!

MY CURRENT TOP FIVE BOOKS ON GARDENING

  • 1. Little and Lewis a Garden Gallery
  • 2. Exotic Planting for Adventurous Gardeners - Chrisopher Lloyd and friends
  • 3. Designing with Plants - Piet Oudolf
  • 4. Tropical Garden Design - Made Wijaya
  • 5.The Elements of Organic Gardening - HRH The Prince of Wales

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