Last May we visited Heronswood and came home with tons of ideas for changing our back yard. We had talked about changing the back border beforehand, but our garden visit inspired us and we drug out the garden hose and started making plans.
We had with a nice, but straight back border garden with a steady incline from one corner to the other. It was something of a grassy ramp that we were used to, but really couldn't use without someone falling off their chair. We decided to raise several beds and make them wider and maybe create a few level areas here and there. As usual, we planned to do the work ourselves, but the project was so big that we decided to split the project into 6 phases that would span 2 years.
Phase 1 - Zen Frog Shade Garden
First we did the Zen Frog Shade Garden. This bed was part of the back border and really needed to be expanded so we could add some rare plants that needed deep shade and hide the utility area next to the shed at the same time. We put up a temporary retaining wall with cinder blocks, raised the top level of the new bed up by 3 feet and added 5 yards of soil.
This photo shows the space before the new expanded shade bed last summer. The slope to the shed was pretty steep and made it hard to use the area the way we wanted to. We really wanted a landing at the shed to store fire wood and our garden carts.
The border bed angled downward steeply, was only 2 feet wide and had compacted, horrible soil.
This photo shows the expanded shade bed with the temporary wall. We raised the bed to the same level as the soil at the fence. We hauled in 5 yards of soil by hand, reset the original plants and added several more I had collected along the way.
The plan was to switch to a permanent retaining wall once we decide exactly how we wanted this new area to look and flow.
The new bed creates a little screening between the new work landing by the shed and the yard, not that people hang out up there very much.
The trees and ferns will grow in over time and screen out most of the shed in the summer time.
Phase 2 - Shrub Island
So we assembled all the pots, grouped them into an oval and watched the hounds. After a little shifting around, we found an arrangement that gave the plants the sun they needed and created a large island that the hounds could use as a high speed running lap.
After we were sure the hounds were happy with the placement and the plants were happy as well, we dug up the space and set the plants.
This island formed the anchor point for a tree archway that we are forming between the Island and the Peninsula bed.
Phase 3 - Level the yard dips
Along with the hill side we had some unfortunate dips in the yard that made things a little surprising for mowing or moving things around on a cart.
So we took the extra soil and filled in the dips. Then we added grass seed, water and watched it grow in.
We immediately wondered why we didn't do this 10 years ago. Such a small change and what a big difference.
Phase 4 - Peninsula bed
Have you ever had an area that was just find as it was but you wanted to do something a little different with the whole area?
Well this is one of those spots. This bed looked great and we loved the colors, but we were developing an area that was kind of a little Grotto and it needed a wrap around bed to complete the feel.
So we started roughing out the new bed, added an obnoxious garden hose to outline the border and started moving in soil. We built up the concept idea of the wrap around peninsula and moved in pots of plants to test drive plant layouts.
It would take a full year for this concept to develop into the design we are finishing off in 2014. Nope, not all garden design ideas are completed on paper. In our garden the design is rouged out on paper, but never really complete until we are well into the project.
Phase 5 - Tree Island
By now you've probably realized that we are not very creative in naming our planting beds. We found we needed to name them so we could talk about each area and not get confused, and this one got the name Tree Island because it had our beautiful Chinese Paperbark Maple. It really deserved a special spot and we love where we put it.
This is one of those spots where we had so many conflicting ideas for the area that we finally just piled up dirt and set the tree and plants.
Surprisingly, this one time it worked out perfectly and we left it as it is.
Phase 6 - The Grotto
This is the area that sits inside the Peninsula Bed and this is where we ran into trouble deciding exactly how we wanted this seating area to look. We went back and forth on the seating area, levels and stone work. All the ideas sounded great and nothing really stood out as 'the right one', so we let the ideas sit for the winter and we decided to revisit this design in 2014.
