From ambitious, artistic landscaper StringOnAStick:
We bought a house 2 years ago that was fairly neglected, especially the landscaping. I knew I was going to end up replacing 95% of the existing landscaping, and because this is a high desert area in central Oregon, I knew it would need to be a xeriscape transformation. And, after having had a xeriscape with no grass for 16 years at our old house, there would be no grass to mow here either. The average annual precipitation here is 12-15 inches, while keeping a green lawn here requires 35-40″ of water because summer rains are rare here, and we are in drought conditions with a declining water table. I’ve been using xeric planting ideas since the two summers I worked for a xeric landscaper in the early 1990’s (where I learned about drip irrigation), so I was pretty sure I could do a full yard transformation and make it work.
I started with the backyard and have worked my way into the front; the front will have to wait for another series because its still in a state of mostly dirt with only part of the hardscaping completed.
For the backyard, the first step was salvaging what plants I could… and then realizing that the native soil is so rocky and hard, plus almost completely deficient in organic matter, that building raised beds is truly the only way to garden here. Xeric plants require excellent drainage, and the native soil drains very poorly because not too far below the surface it is basically solid basalt. The good news is that people are constantly trying to give away basalt chunks from their projects, so I had a ready source of rock to build my beds with.
I added soil, installed my drip irrigation system (with pressure reducers at the sprinkler valves) and then a layer of compost from the city’s composting facility as the mulch. I started 1/3 of the plants from seed under grow lights, and bought 1/3 from a local nursery that exclusively sells native plants, and the remaining 1/3 from a xeriscape mail order nursery I’ve used since 1996.
I wish I had taken better “before” photos; what this post consists of is a set of “before and after” photos that will hopefully be understandable.
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LOOKING TOWARDS THE HOUSE THE DAY AFTER WE MOVED IN – OCTOBER 31, 2020
This photo gives you a little idea about the state of the grass and the overgrown shrubs; pretty neglected, with grass invading all the existing border beds.
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BACKYARD, LOOKING THE OTHER DIRECTION FROM THE HOUSE – MARCH 31, 2021
This is a hint of what it took to build the raised beds with basalt chunks. Unfortunately this photo is looking the opposite direction from the first one, but it gives you an idea of how I spent the spring and summer of 2021!
I think I totaled 24 loads in our Subaru Outback of free boulders over the months. I got lucky and found a guy with a huge source of them that were nicely gray with age and covered in lichens; I tried to build with an eye towards showing the ones with the best lichen coverage in prominent places.
My goal was to get everything done so that all I had to do in the spring of 2022 was plant perennials, and I was able to plant a row of shrubs along the back of the yard in the fall of 2021 to give them and extra jump on growth. It will be another few years before the Mock Orange, Serviceberry and the Greenleaf Manzanita (that was already here when we bought the house) reach full size.
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THE VIEW FROM INDOORS – OCTOBER 31, 2020
As I designed the garden plantings last winter, I made an extra point to carefully choose the plants for the view from the main windows in the rooms where we spend the most time. This is the view into the backyard from the living room, so I thought long and hard about how I wanted this to look.
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ALMOST THE SAME VIEW! – APRIL 30, 2022
This photo was taken late this spring from the same location as the last, but outside the house at the same window. Eventually this deck will be removed and a ground level patio built so we can be “in” the garden instead of above it.
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SAME VIEW, TAKEN THIS WEEK – OCTOBER 7, 2022
This is the same view as the last photo, but taken last week with some of the later blooming plants coming into their best period. In between the last photo and this one, the pathways were covered with decomposed granite as the pathway material.
I have built with flagstone before, but source of flagstone are very far away from this part of the US west and very expensive. So I used a few pieces as stepping stones inside the bed, and used this compacted-in-place material to keep the weeds and the dust down.
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BACKYARD NOW!- OCTOBER 6, 2022This is how the backyard looks right now, at almost the same view as the first photo in this post.
About half of the perennials have already reached full height, and will likely fill out more next year. The remaining plants will take another year or two, and some of the more woody natives (like a few kinds of Sulfur Buckwheat and Salvia, plus xeric penstemons) will take at least another year.
The tall pinkish orange flowers in the distance are a version of Agastache Rupetris called “Apache Sunset” that I grew from seed under lights; I think the long, cool and wet spring we had let these baby plants do just as well as many of the year old perennials I bought.
The tall scarlet flower in the right of the photo is the wildflower Scarlet Bugler, a biennial that I will be sure to collect seed from to get more of those beauties started for next season.
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BACKYARD – OCTOBER 6, 2022
Basically this photo is to answer a question posed to me at a get together recently, which was “what do you love about landscaping?”, a question that at the time I couldn’t answer because it is almost like asking me “what do you love about breathing?”.
I’ve thought a lot about it since then, and I suppose it’s half the process of creation and puzzle solving that I love, and the other half is the beauty I enjoy every time I pass by the garden.
I hope to encourage others to save water in our desert environment by showing them you can have what looks like an English garden that takes minimal water. I selected the plants based first the amount of water they need, and second if they were good sources of food for bees and hummingbirds.
The bonus is all the cover they provide for our roving flocks of California quail; I’ve learned their calls and I can tell when they are on the way to our part of the neighborhood. If you sit still, they don’t see you and you can get a nice closeup view of their flock dynamics; they move like a school of fish, with a large male first checking out the area and then calling the rest of the flock to join him.
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A TEASER FOR NEXT YEAR: THE FRONT YARD – OCTOBER 6, 2022
Once the backyard was planted this past spring, it didn’t need much more from me other than harvesting the veggies in their separate raised bed. So I moved on to the front yard once I realized that the landscaper we thought we’d hired to do that yard was never going to come (workers are in very short supply here so I wasn’t surprised). I decided that was for the best because it let me finish up a lot of connected details, plus save a ton of money!
Previously, I had not been able to come up with a vision for the front yard, but the visit from the landscaper last autumn gave me some ideas and I started to see what I could manage to do. The gravel “pond” in this photo is a infiltration gallery filled with drain stone that I built (enlarged it 3 times but who’s counting?!?) to deal with roof runoff and a very flat grade that left the runoff flooded up against the house in a cloudburst. The most recent cloudburst in June showed that it is now, finally, deep enough.
The sod removal was one thing I paid someone else to do because when the grass is as dead and dry as this was, well, yuck what a nasty job. And I’m 64, so I can let someone else do the really difficult stuff with a machine I can’t transport or lift easily.
The birdbath is a chunk of columnar basalt wrestled into place, with decomposed granite path material placed between the pathway edges built out of yet more of the local basalt.
I am in the process of spreading the dirt I had stockpiled out to replace what was removed by removing the sod, but I’ll have to get a lot more delivered.
My plan is to get some pallets of the local lichen covered basalt boulders delivered, some raised beds built, and to plant the yard and street strip in 80% native shrubs and native grasses. The goal is to have the raised beds look like native rock outcrops with the appropriate plants to go with the large Ponderosa pine in the front yard.
How much farther I get on that task list this year is looking pretty limited for a few reasons, one of which is that my back needs a break! So, probably next spring. I hope to have a “before and after” post for the front yard for you to look at next year at this time.
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What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
satby
Wow! WOW! I’m really impressed, both by how beautiful it is and how much work you did. And now I really need to learn lots more about xeriscaping, because I used to think it was all cactus and succulents, not flowers and shrubs. Really looking forward to seeing your front yard redo!
Baud
Whoa.
satby
In my own garden, I got another batch of mixed pink daffodils I want to get planted this week. We’re getting some rain and potentially a snow shower Monday, but back into the low 60s later in the week. The fall colors have been really great, I wish I could have gotten pictures along the interstate.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Baud:
x2x³Don
Really outstanding. You should be proud for your accomplishments. Sit on the porch and sip an ice tea for me.
Ten Bears
Nicely done, look forward to photos up front. I’ve done several in and around Bend, and my nephew is sorta’ in the business (it’s not taking off as well as one might think); regardless my disdain for what’s become of my old hometown credit where credit is due. Nicely done.
Would we could rip out the thirty-seven golf-courses, twenty-seven breweries …
JPL
This is such a labor of love and do take time to enjoy it.
p.a.
Excellent.
OzarkHillbilly
Boy does that sound familiar, the difference is we do get 40″ or so of rain. Unfortunately for us, it lately comes in bursts of 4-5″ followed by long periods of drought. Clever them Chinese.
Job well done StringOnAStick, very well done. More than a little jealous here.
Raven
Sweet!
kalakal
oh that’s good! Well done, it’s beautiful
Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit
Oh my, what a beautiful oasis you’ve created. I’m a fan of English gardens. Good to know I can have that look without using all teh water.
Lovely. Lovely, lovely.
Lapassionara
This is fantastic! What delightful photos. Thanks for posting.
delphinium
What a stunning transformation! Look forward to seeing the updated front yard next year.
Gvg
Here in Florida, they use the term xeriscape to mean not needing supplemental water. We normally get 65 inches a year. Withstanding dry periods in a area that is swampy and adapted to standing water is different. Some plants can take both, but you have to know about them.
we are also one of the highest lightening strike areas in the world, possibly the highest. Our storms can start fires as well as end them. Our eco system has many plants which need fire to propagate. This causes problems for a large population of humans.
Our xeriscape landscapes tend to be much more crowded. More natural rain and sun means everything grows fast. Planning for my retirement landscape, I want less work because I assume my aches and pains will increase. A big part of my calculations are planting things that will grow the right size and then not need a lot of trimming, especially trimming on ladders. I have been replacing hedges of common things that grow 30 feet if you don’t trim them every few weeks forever. This year I cut a few down and replaced with camellia bushes which grow slow and that you don’t trim.
Mousebumples
Beautiful landscape work! 👏
sab
65 inches Yikes.
kalakal
@Gvg: The thing I find weird in Florida is that plants either become monsters or snuff it. Half the year it rains like crazy, half the year it’s dry, there’s a lot of sunshine and in the rainy season the humidity is like being in the sauna. There’s no soil, just a mix of sand, shells, and construction material. It’s a tough environment for plants. Those that can take it become giants. Coming from English herbaceous borders its been a shock.
I love what Stringonastick has done here, it looks glorious and is adapted to local conditions. I try for the same, I hate seeing all those stupid sprinklers going for those wretched looking lawns, Florida lawns really don’t look good. And then people complain about sinkholes!!!. Lots of the state is a thin crust of limestone over water filled caves, empty the water, the roof falls in.
Scout211
StringOnAStick, your back yard is a masterpiece. You must enjoy so many hours of sitting on your deck and enjoying the beauty of your amazing accomplishment.
One question from another homeowner in a dry area (NorCal): Do you have to cut back all the plants at the end of the blooming season or in the winter season?
I don’t have xeriscaped beds exactly, but I do have low water native plants in several beds and have been surprised that I have to cut back so much growth every fall. For some reason I thought low water also meant low maintenance. Silly me.
MomSense
Fabulous! Love the way this is looking.
Now if only my local climate would decide what it wanted to be I could figure out how to plant.
Kristine
What beautiful plantings—I love how you’ve remade that yard and saved yourself a load of work in the future by working with your environment and not against it.
Tree work was completed—spruce and crabapple cut down and oaks trimmed. The oak on the property line must’ve taken at least 3 hours. One smaller guy climbed all over cutting dead branches—he had a safety line but damn. Cutting the large branches that had grown between the power lines was a two-man job, with smaller guy cutting the branches in sections and looping them with rope while another worker held the other end of said rope and lowered the sections to the ground. The tree looks so much better, it’s been properly trimmed instead of hacked, and I don’t have to worry about the neighbors’ garages anymore.
We’re in the midst of a cold snap here in NE Illinois, with days in the 40s and 50s and nights dipping into the 30s with frost and freeze warnings. I’ve been bringing containers indoors at night, disconnected the hose, and will mower-mulch the first layer of leaves 🍁 in the next few days. The colors have been lovely so far, but I’m not ready for winter.
MazeDancer
Cheering you madly, StringOnAStick!
Stunning, glorious work.
MelissaM
Wow! That’s a lot of work and a LOT of beautiful payback! Very lovely.
Elizabelle
String: spectacular! Lucky neighbors, with the second floor windows to see your beautiful garden, too.
Please keep us apprised of your progress. And some eventual close ups of the lichen covered basalt, and of the birds and living creatures that visit. Quail are a lot of fun to watch.
LionIsland
You might want to try Talinum calycinum, a lovely succulent from dunes and rocky places in the Midwest… they gave the whole genus a new name, but still searchable… that’s the one I grow in Central New York, I think you might have more options in the genus…. Sweet little thing that blooms for months ( tho only opens for the hottest part of the day), will self sow and spread around, probably finding its way to cracks between stones, softening edges like hens and chicks while being at least US native. I’d attach a pic but I don’t see the button to do that…
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
A great looking transformation! Thanks for sharing this set of pics and description of all your work.
I have to work hard to grow many of those plants here in PA with extra drainage in sandbed gardens. Little Eriogonums (wild buckwheats)) are my favorites!
oldgold
The Fall
I have two gardens. One, West of Eden, referred to by the local wags as West of Weeden, is located on the outer rim of the Hardy Twilight Zone. The other, Paradise Lost, is located on the southwest coast of Ponce de Leon’s peculiar pensioner’s peninsula.
West of Eden, I personally “tend” to. Gardening in the manner Salvador Dali p*ai#nte!d and e e cummings punctuated
Paradise Lost, I physically have nothing to do with. Long ago, my humorless HOA had court writs issued that made sure of this. As such, unlike West of Eden, it was well ordered, bountiful and beautiful.
Some gardeners and all HOAs try to impose order on nature to better enjoy its bounty and beauty. Some succeed and come to believe nature is benign. These folks often wax warmly about Mother Nature.
In my experience, nature is not benign and certainly not worthy of being referred to as Mother. Rather,
MotherNature is radically and pitilessly indifferent to the concerns of humanity and most certainly HOAs. This ruthless indifference means in combination withFatherTime,MotherNature will eventually always render our attempts at control futile, inexorably result in our falling from grace and ultimately being expelled from the garden – not to mention the HOA. This once forbidden knowledge is the genesis of naming my gardens East of Eden and Paradise Lost.This past week, I traveled south to assess the damage the natural disaster named Ian had done to my sunny shack. Although a bit shackier, something the HOA thought impossible, it survived mostly intact, except Paradise Lost has been lost under 4 feet of sand and brine. Thanks Mom!
Betsy
That is amazing! It looks very lush, and very English cottage garden-y. Splendid!
And it is wonderful that you have figured out how to retain what little water comes down on site (though all in a burst) with the ponding area. Both keeping it away from damaging the house, and possibly making it available for plants. Like some of the best traditional practices in agriculture where conditions are harsh.
I can only imagine that you have a yard full of birds and wildlife and pleasure.
Jeffery
My 74 year old joints are not happy. Yesterday I finished cleaning the flower bed in front of the porch out then started to plant it with hardy annuals I grew from seed.
This morning getting up was a project. Once moving I ate then back out to finish planting the front bed for next year.
Then I decided to put the Heliopsis plants started this year in. They go in front of the sidewalk in front of the porch. That required moving bark mulch and landscaping fabric. Got three plants in there. If I can move tomorrow I will put new landscaping cloth down around the plants to give them a chance to grow.
While work on planting the Heliopsis I hear some guy say you Irish. I looked up to see an older Irish off the boat man talking to a younger guy. The younger guy said, ay. They chatted a bit. As they parted the older guy said, we may not be kin but we have the same king. They are from Northern Ireland it seems. The younger guy walked off I saw he was wearing a kilt. His clan colors I suppose. Must be why the older guy asked him if he was Irish. Philly must be a destination for the Irish there seem to be a lot of them here. I wonder what the draw is.
oldgold
StringOnAStick: Your wondrous garden reminds me of some wisdom my Grandfather gave me decades ago. “younggold, the most important water for having a good garden, is not precipitation, but perspiration.”
way2blue
Very impressive transformation. Incredible amount of work…
I’m slowly transforming my yard with native and quasi natives (e.g., strawberry tree) in the SF bay area, but now need to consider which plants can handle excessive heat events in the summer. I could hear them shrieking last month.
A question: do you have drip emitters going to each plant in your raised beds? Will they at some point no longer need drip assistance in the summer?
StringOnAStick
@satby: Thanks! Yes, unfortunately most think that xeriscaping means an expanse of baking gravel, some cactus and a cow skull, when in reality it can be just as floriferous as an English cottage garden. It all depends on the plants you choose, and the remarkable efficiencies you get with drip irrigation. One advantage to not using sprinklers is you are directing water just to the plants you want, so you end up with a LOT fewer weeds.
StringOnAStick
@Gvg: Wise planning on your part, the work I’m doing has that as part of the focus as well. I watched my mother make their very large lot (1/2acre) into a maintenance nightmare that my now widowed father can’t do and can barely afford the cost of having someone else try to manage it. Getting things to a state you can handle for as long as possible, and that won’t be too hard to pay for later is a perfect plan.
StringOnAStick
@Scout211: Well, it depends on the your plant choices as to maintenance needs. Lots of blooms usually means more maintenance is required. The woody things, large or small, don’t need much. The things that are primarily for flowering do need cutting back but the recommendation now is that for most things, leave them standing over the winter and cut off the dead in the spring. For agastaches (hummingbird magnets, highly recommended!), they are much more likely to survive the winter this way if you are at the cold end of their range.
Another reason to leave everything standing until spring is more beneficial insects will survive that way. Naturalists now recommend you leave your leaves in the beds over winter for the same reason; with insects in decline, this is one way we can all help. It was an internal struggle last year to force myself to not rake up the leaves and leave things “untidied”, but I had even fewer pests this year and more native bees because of it.
There’s a few ways to look at it; planting closely shades the soil so fewer weeds get started and the shade helps reduce evaporation of precious water, both are also reasons to use a good cover of mulch. Using slow growing woody plants like he many forms of sulfur buckwheat will eventually create dense, permanent cover of the soil but it takes a few years so some annuals to fill in the blank spaces until then helps but be sure to choose ones with similar water requirements. I use a lot of California poppy for that, they do great here, bloom all summer and even act as perennials if they are in deep sandy soil.
StringOnAStick
@LionIsland: Sounds lovely, thanks for the recommendation, I will look it up.
StringOnAStick
@oldgold: Oh, that salt water intrusion sounds bad. Sorry for your home.
There was a school of feminist thought 30 years ago or so that attempts to enforce order on nature is just another aspect of the dominance of money and patriarchy on the natural world. I recently learned that the whole idea of having a mowed lawn originally came from wealthy English landowners showing that having land not in production showed just how rich you were, rich enough to have employees with scythes to keep it short. Some used a small flick of sheep to complete the pastoral look, but only if the front of the major house had a hidden awake to keep them away from the front of the house, lest sheep poop trouble the eyes and nose of the rich owner and his guests. It’s crazy to think how this idea of lawns as status symbol is why we have it everywhere today, even in desert areas. England had an incredibly dry summer this year, very hard on gardens used to rain. People watered their plants, but as one garden show star noted, it’s silly to water grass because it will go dormant and recover when it rains. Here we just keep pouring treated drinking water on grass. Before I completed the backyard transformation, I would cringe every time I heard the sprinklers come on, and that’s every 2-3 days here in a hot dry area.
StringOnAStick
@Betsy: The birds and wildlife love our yard, judging from how often I refill the feeders! A neighbor two houses over has a bee hive, so the bee actions this year has been excellent! She showed me how to fill a shallow basin with gravel and keep water in it so the beds can land and get a drink without drowning, so I keep one of those going.
StringOnAStick
@oldgold: Yep on the perspiration! I try to do all the hardscaping early in the year or in the fall when it’s cooler, then just in the morning during the heat of summer. It’s my Zen practice though, a full day in the garden in what my husband calls “your project mode” is very satisfying and calming for me.
StringOnAStick
@way2blue: I have drip irrigation that is 1/2″ tubing with 1/2 GPH emitters pre-installed every foot. That worked great in the clay soils of CO where I’ve done most my gardening prior to moving here because clay soils spread the water into a broad cone; the sandy soil we have here means the emitters in that tubing need to be close to the plant’s base because the cone of wetness is very narrow. There is a grid of that tubing spaced about a foot apart throughout that main bed, spaced farther for the more xeric plants that would drown with too much water. One bed is more those kinds of plants. There’s two fruit trees so they each got a large spiral of this tubing and are on an irrigation zone that gets more water, so the plants near them are also ones that like more water.
I tried to make different “rooms”, one raised bed is the veggie garden with its own irrigation zone, the main one in most of the photos, and an edge of that one and another smaller bed that is very xeric, with the fruit trees around The perimeter.
The easiest way to do drip irrigation is with 1/2″ supply lines and then 1/4″ tubing off of it with emitters to each plant. Bigger plants need two, one in each side and more for shrubs. The problem with that system is it is so easy to pull up the 1/4″ tubing with a rake and break the plastic fittings once they get brittle from being outside for a few years. This is why the recommendation now is for the 1/2″ tubing with pre-installed emitters and saving the 1/4″ stuff for plants in pots. I had never used the 1/2″ with emitters until this yard, And it takes a different approach to planning for sure. It is much easier to already have the tubing installed and pinned down before you plant any plants in a new landscape; in an existing landscape it helps to have a helper so you don’t break your plants off while wrestling tubing around them. There’s some good books out there explaining how to do drip irrigation. Two important things: use twice as many hold down pins as you first guess, one every foot will help keep the tubing under the mulch instead of working up to the surface with daily hot/cool temperature swings. The other is to only use quality products; the big box store stuff is junk and the emitters will fail in a few years and just spew out unrestricted water flow. I buy mine online from a drip irrigation company in northern CA. The final is you MUST have a pressure reducer installed somewhere upstream of the drip irrigation system or else emitter failure will definitely happen, and this is much harder to track down than a easily observed failing sprinkler.
It’s all worth it though, we dropped our summer water use by 85% and as plants become fully established, they will be able to get by on less.
StringOnAStick
@way2blue: As to your last question, this place is very, very dry in the summer so there will always be a need for at least some supplemental water here, but the amount needed will decline for the truly xeric plants, but that’s only 1/8 of the garden. To never need any water would be very tough here and while the native landscape here in beautiful Ponderosa pines, manzanita and scrub with grasses, that would take years to establish and be very dusty.
pieceofpeace
@Ten Bears: You’re speaking of Bend? Many times were spent there, Sun River and the Rogue River rafting with the kids. All displayed the charm and beauty of Oregon. Now my son wants me to tag along on a trip to Sun River with his young children, but the area has changed where nature was the high point of the place and outdoor activities? What a loss.
StringOnAStick
Thank you to everyone for their kind comments, I appreciate it!
Gravie
Are you in Bend? We moved here in 2013 from the lush and easy-to-garden environment of Maryland and it has been a long learning curve to acclimate to the completely different growing needs of a completely different group of plants. Oh, and the presence of hungry deer, who’ve eliminated a lot of desirable plants that grow well in this climate. (I gave up on sunflowers, for example, after two seasons of watching them get close to blooming, only to be reduced to stalks over night. Fences are prohibited in our neighborhood.) Anyway, your yard is gorgeous, and I look forward to your updates.)
Geminid
@StringOnAStick: That’s some nice rockwork! I hope you enjoyed it. Dry laid walls are fun if you don’t have to do too much at once
The paths are a nice color. That type of material allows for a lot of flexibility.
StringOnAStick
@Gravie: Yes, we live in Bend. Without the backyard fence there would be deer issues for sure. Our neighbourhood was built in 2000.
StringOnAStick
@Geminid: It was an all summer project building the walls and finding suitable rock. If I’d known how much rock it was going to take, I might not have done it! I definitely have a sense of accomplishment about the walls. They are all firmly wedges together and the spaces between filled with more rock to wedge them as strongly as possible plus to keep soil from washing out as much as possible
StringOnAStick
@Gravie: I’ve found that lavender and any member of the salvia family will be left alone by deer. Rosemary of the “Arp” variety overwinter here and that’s a nice landscape plant too. Ornamental oregano and sage like the Biergarten variety works here too. If you want any plant suggestions or to talk about it, ask Watergirl for my email address.
Geminid
@StringOnAStick: If you have much more to do I can recommend a dead-blow hammer. I got a nice 5 pound one at Harbor Freight and it did not cost too much. The smaller ones work well too, and are very useful for various other tasks. They don’t bounce like a steel hammer or a rubber mallet will.
Tehanu
Well, satby wrote exactly what I was going to write, so I’m just saying, More wow! I have little interest in, and less than zero skill at, gardening, and I live in an apartment (no yard) anyway; all I have is a couple of house plants whose health is solely the result of my cleaning lady’s attentions. But I’m totally blown away by this. Wonderful!
StringOnAStick
@Geminid: Thanks for that suggestion. At the end of last summer I was burned out on building walls and said I was done with it, but a few months and I was back at it again. The West side of the house was just dust and some ancient wooden beds that had to go so we could get the exterior painted; they didn’t get enough sun to grow veggies and would require dragging hoses constantly so I got rid of them and used the soil in the back, but then I decided to make raised beds along that side with the decomposed granite pathway from the front yard, through this side yard and then into the backyard. It’s nice to have a comprehensive plan and a style, but it was a ton of work too. I’m looking forward to finishing up the front yard and then just watching it all grow and evolve.
LiminalOwl
@StringOnAStick: Looks like the thread isn’t quite dead; I just wanted to add to the chorus of “wow!”s. Thank you for sharing the building and progress of your garden. I am an apartment-dwelling non-gardener who knows barely enough to appreciate the beauty and your hard work, but that much I can do. (Also, I have visited high desert areas and been appalled by the lush lawns and personal golf courses. Your xeriscaping, in contrast, is inspiring.)