We are not exactly sure which year we started working on this poor neglected garden. It began when we transplanted the peonies from the back yard where they were struggling to survive. Then we moved a mall arborvitae that suffered a bad winter and didn’t look like it would survive. We have added some tiger lilies, and a few irises, but unfortunately this area was hidden from view by two rows of Nanking cherry shrubs. The picture above shows the view looking west and as you can see, the flowers are hidden from view. The picture below, looking south, shows the garden that we decided needed our attention.
The picture above also shows that we extended the garden to the north with a nice layer of black dirt and unknown to us this dirt came full of acorns, which all the creatures roaming about the place at night love to dig up. So now the garden is getting a makeover, and to start we will remove all the dead and dying Nanking cherry shrubs. These shrubs have had trouble surviving the winters and the effects of the deer and rabbits browsing on the tips of their branches. The picture below shows the garden after removing the shrubs and some of the river rock that surrounded them.
The picture below is our progress after one full day of work on the garden. We have all the old shrubs and their roots removed as well as constructing a rock moat along the east side of the garden. We will plant grass in front of the rock moat and the new design will make the mowing easier as it removed an inside corner.
The north boundary of the garden is defined with this new stepping stone walk and rock moat.
Our second day of work completed the garden space. It took the entire day to spread the mulch and then edge the entire garden with rock. We also removed the large arborvitae that was located on the SW corner of the garden (the large rocks in the photo below mark the spot). This shrub was almost 6 foot tall and too large for the garden space. This completes the work on this garden, except for planting the flowers. We have several varities of iris ordered and will add other flowers over time.
When we finished this web page, and the garden, last year we thought the only thing left to do was to order some bulbs and wait for the flowers. Unfortunately the varmints (possum, raccoons, woodchucks, and etc.) liked the bulbs for food and nothing sprouted. So we decided that a fence was in order. This fence is constructed of cedar and is a total of 84 foot in length.
The gate was constructed from cedar 2 X 4’s with rough sawn slats that are held in place with the mortise and tenon joints.
With the gate in place we can now start over with planting some new bulbs.
