It has finally happened: the heavy work in the garden has ended for the spring, to be picked up again in the fall. The temperature and humidity are too high to work past about 10:00 a.m., which gives us only enough time to do maintenance, not to do proper digging and building. Here is the Before and After Story.
When we bought the house in September of 2008, it was easy to see the potential of the back yard, but difficult to pour money or sweat into it because the Knoxville house had to be sold first, and something had to be done about my hip, back, and leg so I could actually do the work. We were living between the two places, visiting Penny Lane and then back to Pedigo Road, where we stayed the majority of the time, moving in small increments the furniture and boxes and things too messy to allow the public to see (I thought of my studio as a working environment; the realtors saw it as clutter— could I please clean it up or pack it all away?). I spent the winter months staring out the windows of the Penny Lane sun room dreaming of the garden and studio that should be there one day. This pre-sale photo by the previous owner was my view from the upper back of lot:
The building on the left eventually became my studio (here it is still in its detached-garage-state), and the odd assortment of angles on right is the house, U-shaped around the patio. I have tried to take photos standing in the same (approximate) location so you can see the changes we have made. Today the view is this:
Phase one: Stacked Stone Walls. The first thing that HAD to go was the black retaining wall. The previous owners had the lower terrace carved out of a hill that came right to the house, taking down trees and making room for the addition of the detached garage. Because I am a sane woman, I never thought of pulling down the wall, only of covering it up. The wall is built of recycled rubber (tire) timbers that will never rot. But, an ugly black wall that will not rot is still an ugly black wall, and a black wall in a garden is somewhat less than inspiring. I found pre-cast stone at Lowe's and began to bring home small loads of it, deciding to build a small wall on the north-west side of the sun room where I would plant one of my favorite shrubs, hydrangeas. This would be my "test" wall, the one that would decide the future of my masonry explorations. Once accomplished, I would have the hands-on experience to begin the rather large wall-sheathing project—or to drop the idea and think of something else to dream over. I read everything I could get my hands on about building stacked stone walls. I had done some small, raised beds in previous homes, so I knew just enough to be optimistic about the large-scale process, but optimistically cautious.
This is the hydrangea bed, soaking up the little sliver of morning sun it can get in a day:
A single little mophead is making a valiant effort to bloom this summer:
After this minor success, I found my father's four-foot long level and began to work on disguising the black walls with heavy pre-cast stone, using a snow shovel with a flat blade to get a level bed for the stone. The stones, by the way, weigh 23 pounds each. I didn't weigh them, but a friend of ours built a retaining wall beside his driveway of the same stone, and he weighed them before he started. I am glad I didn't know how much they weighed until deep into the project— each stone is equal in weight to a small child. This is an instance of that classic adage, ignorance is bliss.
I have still not worked out how to finish the stairs to the upper terrace. As they are now, they rise steeply and have very, very narrow treads so there needs to be some re-engineering of the space, perhaps even cutting out the rubber timbers and starting over. As I sit here thinking about it, I have made the command decision that the lower stairs will be next year's project.
Phase two: upper terrace walls left and right. This entire landscape was conceived as an attempt to level up the slope of the yard. This is the right side, originally (notice the day lilies that dwarf the bushes behind):
It was here I learned most of what I know about building a wall on uneven ground. That bottom row, which drops as the hill slides downward, was such a pickle to level! You can just see the second raised bed built behind this one (which was actually a phase four project):
Phase three: lower terrace flagstone floor where the two large mulched areas originally were. There was a terrific amount of litter from the mulch that was tracked in, and there seemed no way to keep a clean house but to put in stone patio extensions on each side of the lower level. The work, however, was beyond me. Charles called in the pros and had it put in after the Knoxville house was sold.
On the right side (above, in the circle of stone), in front of the studio, there was originally a small fountain that Charles hated. Charles hates any water feature as he had a bad experience with a swimming pool in the back yard of a house we owned earlier in our marriage (the bad experience was that it had to be kept clean).
The past winter abetted him by heaving the fountain out of the ground. He would not re-seat it, but began to make rather gleeful plans to beat it into pieces with a sledge hammer before carrying it off to the landfill. I was able to find a home for it with Jill and Joe in Knoxville where it has an unthreatened existence outside the bedroom window. And against all his complaining, I began to think of the fountain's replacement.
The idea of replacing the fountain with yet another water-thingee horrified Charles. But I found one I liked that was above ground, with a wide bowl. The Adorables could play there without slipping into the in-ground bowl of the original fountain, I decided, and Autumn Hill delivered and set it up for us at the end of last summer on the left patio extension. We had debated this issue until the end of last spring, when we had to either plant something in the right-side hole or fill it in. A lovely dogwood tree was the choice to live in the spot once occupied by the green, in-ground fountain. This spring we moved hosta from a too-sunny location on the side of the house to grow in front of the sun room and down one side of the new fountain area. The plants are thriving, as you can see here:
Phase four: upper terrace second set of beds and stairs (incomplete). Once we removed the huge beds of day lilies, the upper beds were very uneven and had more slope than I'd originally thought, so Charles and I put in two small raised beds, with irises on the left, and a larger bed of mixed plantings on the right. The tall plants with the small magenta flowers are in the mulliens (or mullens) family and are quite aggressive. But the rabbits use that to move through the yard to nibble at the small herb garden near the house. Please also notice Charles' bird bath. There are an awfully lot of dirty birds here. They line up and take turns in the bird bath, and when that is backed up, the big ones come to the fountain!
Then the steps to this area had to be addressed. They are laid with huge bricks rather than the stone I used everywhere else because the narrower brick could be adjusted for the large roots of trees that seem to have chosen that particular spot to converge. With the drought of the past summers, I am reluctant to further damage the trees by cutting into their root system. The stairs are incomplete because they require my getting on hands and knees to do the work, which I am not supposed to do. In small doses, I was able to finish what we have. Extending the stairs will wait for next year. I did lay them so that the rise is shallow and the tread is wide enough to accommodate my foot without half of it hanging off. Charles' wave petunias grace the upper level.
Phase five: mammoth planting. Before we started planting the beds, Autumn Hill planted the perimeter of the yard for us, moving some shrubs and setting up boundaries for the shrub backdrop to the beds. They put in hydrangea, a snowball virburnum, cherry laurel, forsythia, camilla, and formosa azalea. After this we began to plant the beds but have paused now to wait for the summer and fall shrubs and flowers to come on the market. I left spaces for mixing the seasons in planting so there is some color in the garden throughout the year. I really look forward to finding perennial mums later in the season.
These are some photos of the flower beds. The lamb's ear seems determined to take the prize for fastest-growing:
Here is oak leaf hydrangea, a gift from my sister:
Euphorbia by the walk way to the studio (to bloom later, but lovely foliage in the meanwhile):
One of several mosses, this is the ice plant:
A tiny bird bath balances on the edge of a wall, in the shadow of the lamb's ear:
Parsley and lemon balm:
Lavender, which languished for two years in a large pot. Once in the ground, though, it must have taken a liking to its new home, because it has grown, bloomed, and started spreading the way children uncurl from sleep and stretch arms and legs in all directions:
Cone Flower, which was labeled "compact," but doesn't seem to realize it should stay small:
A sun-loving fern, Jacob's Ladder, has great textural appeal:
The containers are also planted. They are bunched on the patio and sprinkled through the beds, as well. Marigolds, which are the essence of the summer sun:
Creeping Jenny, restrained in a pot with summer hyacinth to keep it from gobbling up the garden (garden journals call it a "thug," but it is so appealing, thug or not!):
A pot of mint, without which a Southern garden cannot be complete. How would we have iced tea without mint and a wedge of lemon?
Strawberries— the pot is a mass of little green and becoming-pink berries. And to make things even sweeter, my niece, Nahum, brought me a second pot of strawberries yesterday, so we will be snacking all summer!
Geranium, this one kept for its beautiful foliage and not its wimpy little blossoms:
Coleus, a miniature variety called "Indian Frills":
Phase six: For the fall. This depends upon how we feel, if digging and hauling stone fits into our plans and if our bones will agree to that much labor the last month or so before Thanksgiving. We've ordered hundreds of spring bulbs from Breck's, so there will be great excitement here in October when they arrive. And I remember beautiful button-sized mums from my mom-in-law's garden that I would like to find in the fall perennials section of the nursery.
And that is the story of the Penny Lane garden, to date. As a garden is never static, it will evolve over time into something more stable than what we have now. The plants that are unhappy in their present positions will want other light or water locations and will need moving or replacing next spring. There will be mistakes to correct. But for all the work, it is a real pleasure to sit on the patio and look up the hill at the garden Charles and I worked so hard to put in. The birds eating and bathing, the lizards lounging on the warm stone (and keeping an eye out for the larger, protein-hungry birds), butterflies amongst the patio containers and every-present squirrels and chipmunks are a source of never-ending delight.
And there is the "help" the Adorables give us with the watering. Yesterday we had to come inside and change into dry clothes. Ethan has learned to sneak around behind me and suddenly divert the stream of water from the hose with his hand on the nozzle. He was squirted back for his efforts. Poor Bethany, standing beside us, horribly wetted and complaining of our behavior . . . . It is hard to act one's age in a garden when there are children about!
