From commentor & determined homespace remaker StringOnAStick:
Here’s a project I completed this year that I think came out quite nicely and is my last major hardscaping project for this house.
We moved in here just a bit over 4 years ago and in that time I have transformed every bit of the reasonably large lot, from sadly neglected lawn (which we were never going to keep; this is high desert and having that much grass is obscene, though sadly common here) and some badly constructed raised beds fully invaded with with lawn grass, so the best bet was to just start over. My last project was this one: getting rid of the huge painted pine (?!) deck and having a smaller area of pavers installed so I’d have more planting area. I then realized I needed to install some flagstone to get from the paver area down to the main pathways, plus use the local basalt to shore up the edge of the pavers and the paver steps once that work was completed by the paver pros. Who says landscaping isn’t something you figure out as you go along, realizing what problems need to be solved?
(My husband isn’t into gardening or landscaping, so this is my deal. He will help when I need large amounts of material moved and he did help me move some bigger rock after I crushed/broke my finger tip in a flagstone handling accident late in that phase of this project.)
My goal was to complete this project before the summer heat hit and this kind of hard labor just wasn’t going to be much fun if I didn’t beat the heat.
The photo below is of what I had been wanting to get rid of since we moved in here. The ugly green painted pine deck was a huge waste of space, with peeling paint but not rotten wood , so I deconstructed it and gave it all away on Craigslist to a local small farmer. There were little poured-in-place concrete disks that the foundation sat on that I had to dig up and haul away, all 60 of them, plus 14 properly set-in-concrete posts from a deck addition that had to be dug out and hauled away as well. I’m thankful for our wonderful neighbor (and very close friend, now known to all as my “garden husband”) and his pickup, or else I would have done a lot of trips to the landfill in my Prius. (The Prius often gets used as my truck, but I’m trying to limit that because it’s got a lot of miles on it and I want it to last long enough that I can find a used plug-in or full EV at some point.)
The next task was to make the existing bed on the edge of the old deck bigger, which meant in addition to more pollinator perennials, I could plant a peach tree and a pear, both of which will be kept at under 6′ tall using the “Grow a Tiny Fruit Tree” method. The second photo is looking in the same general direction as the first photo, and at the newly extended rock wall that was built to contain more soil and make this bed bigger than it originally was. The yellow pathway material is decomposed granite, a locally popular material that is compacted into place and is a reasonable and affordable choice here since flagstone is quite expensive due to the distance it has to travel to get here. That’s also why the raised beds throughout the yard have all been built with the irregular chunks of basalt, because if there is one thing central Oregon has a LOT of, it’s chunks of basalt! I got most of it free online but the last bits I’ve had to purchase so I could get stuff with lichen and that is nicely weathered to dark gray for aesthetic purposes. After building all these raised beds with odd shapes, I’ve gotten pretty good at “seeing” what can fit with what and then digging a bit to seat each stone, and then interlocking it all with smaller bits. Every raised bed in our yard can have people walk on the blocks because they are safely wedged together and quite stable.
With the pavers in, my own rock work building new beds, and the drip irrigation system installed, I started planting. The third photo is early days after the initial planting efforts. Everything except the peach, pear, grape, and the rose I succumbed to (the garden husband got me going on roses, so I bought a David Austin Barrett Browning) are all low water use plants, so the irrigation system installed slightly below the mulch level is configured to provide more water to the peach, pear, grape, and rose. The beauty of a drip system placed slightly below grade is you get very few weeds because the surface isn’t being sprinkled or damp; it is very dry here in the summer so once the spring damp period is over, that’s the end of having weeds sprout. (Here’s a hint for you budding drip irrigation people: take photos before you bury your drip lines under mulch, and only use 1/2″ tubing in your landscape because the 1/4″ stuff is only recommended for use in pots now because it comes apart way too easily compared to the connections made with 1/2″ or 3/4″ tubing, and you don’t realize it’s a problem until you have plants die because they lost their irrigation supply to a random rake or shovel.) Because our entire yard is drip irrigated now, we use about 30% of what a standard lawn grass yard requires here.
The photo below is a view looking back towards the house, including the flagstone path with a low step, a Reliance peach I planted to the left and topped in the “Grow a Tiny Fruit Tree” method, a Venessa grape, and 3 juniper posts that have been set in cement that will eventually have high cross pieces to make a grape arbor. The grape is in no danger of reaching that height this year, so I haven’t gotten around to getting the nice peeled fresh juniper cross pieces installed yet. The cross pieces will be installed up at the top so people 6’6″ can still walk under the grape arbor. On the right side and in the foreground is one of the two shorter and not completely peeled juniper posts that will be part of an espalier setup for a Conference pear, which is a baby tree you can just see at the edge of the photo.
This is a new perspective, looking into the backyard through the juniper posts that are the eventual grape arbor mentioned above, as seen from the opposite direction in the prior photo. I just really liked the morning light in this photo; this is the east side of the house. The tree in the close distance is a pie cherry that was here when we moved in (oh happy day! I love tart cherries) and behind that is a nectarine, which produces erratically here, due to frequent late frosts and it blooming too early for this area.
The photo below is of the garden bed built in the early photos, after it has had the whole summer to grow, the pear trained to the espalier system; I especially like the sun’s light shining through the Indian Rice grass seed heads. I am very pleased with how this garden bed evolved this season and I’m looking forward to the following years.
The top photo is the reason why I put in the effort to tear out that deck and build this bed and drop the coin for the paver patio. Sitting there and looking at the garden I built 3 years ago and watching the hummingbirds enjoy the plants I put in for their use, plus all the other pollinators and the changing flower show throughout the season, is so worth all that labor — fellow gardeners understand what I mean!
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What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
War for Ukraine Day 997: Russian Drone Swarms After Midnight (local time)
Don
Applause! That’s what I’m talking about! You are a true gardener. Just fantastic. What a lot of work!
Gloria DryGarden
This looks like the stuff in high country gardens catalogue. Really nice. I want a plant list… I’m trying to guess that soft yellow mound by th3 edge, is it a decorative hops- name escapes me, or stachys syriaca, I’m getting that name wrong, blue fuzzy little leaves, Syrian something? Is the tallish yellow thing Stanley’s ( princes plume? Or some other thing? It’s really beautiful.
all of it is lovely.
Nancy
Your garden photos and the description of your process are beautiful and inspiring. Thank you for sharing all this with us.
Suburban Mom
Wow! That is stunning and so well-planned. And now I want a garden husband.
CCL
Nice!
Princess
Love it. That’s a lot of rocks to move.
Maxim
Wow! What a huge project, but what a payoff. Thanks for sharing it.
mappy!
Kudos. It’s a warm stone, comfy looking space!
Liminal Owl
Thank you for sharing the transformation process, and the beautiful space that your hard work (and what a lot of it!) has created.
delphinium
What an amazing and beautiful transformation! All of your hard work has definitely paid off. Thank you so much for sharing!
Lapassionara
Love this. What a lovely garden.
Quinerly
I love this post! The pictures and the descriptions are great. I love posts that come with “the how to” aspect.
Kinda related, I was thinking last week about emailing Betty Cracker about the possibility of BJ adding a FP posting on the weekends of BJer projects, not necessarily garden projects. More specifically, a thread with people asking for advice/help on specific things. We have so many people here who are so knowledgeable on certain subjects. I remember how Ozark would jump in on threads if someone sought him out for carpentry/building questions. Suzanne has jumped in from time to time when building and architecture questions come up.
The thread could be more of a mishmash of advice/information. Just last week,,I mentioned something about trading my AWD mini van that I use for camping for an AWD truck with a topper. A very nice commenter piped up with his thoughts about keeping the van.
I’m rambling a bit….A stand alone thread “Ask our Community.” Hope I am making sense.
Any way, wonderful pictures. Beautiful project! Enjoyed seeing it first thing this AM. TY.
pieceofpeace
You’ve created such a comfortably soothing landscape. All the information you provide is appreciated as well.
sab
That garden is gorgeous.
But so much planning!
Ohio we just clear it and plant it and stuff grows (weeds and what we planted.) Our only challenge is weed control.
kalakal
What a fantastic garden. Congrats on the result and total respect for the planning and hard work
J.
Wow, wow, wow! Absolutely gorgeous! I am so impressed! Thanks for sharing your garden and story. I have always wanted to create a beautiful little garden but have been lazy and scared off by the threat of rabbits and deer (when we lived in the Northeast). But you have inspired me, and I may give it another shot when we move back to the Northeast in the spring.
Rileys Enabler
Fantastic! Looks like an enormous amount of work but the results are stunning. I’m really envious of your piece of heaven.
Dorothy A. Winsor
That’s a gorgeous yard. Is it a lot of work to keep up?
Suzanne
This is fantastic. Hardcape looks beautiful.
Jeffg166
So much work. It looks great.
Kristine
Beautiful! Thank you for the detailed descriptions and discussion, too.
Watching as pollinators settle in and make themselves at home—such a reward.
Denali5
What a beautiful garden! All your planning and hard work really paid off. Thank you for sharing and keeping us inspired to keep dreaming.
Ceci7
Beautiful and inspiring! I’ve been adding more (native) grasses to my beds, and share your appreciation of light coming through them.
H.E.Wolf
Spectacular! Thank you for the photos and essay.
MelissaM
I am in awe! The amount of work equal to the payoff – just brilliant! How did you get rid of the grass?
BenInNM
Looks beautiful! Congratulations on getting it all to come together.
satby
Incredible job and fantastic results, StringOnAStick! I couldn’t have done it, I don’t have that gift of visualization. Kudos.
Trivia Man
@pieceofpeace: I especially like noting the specific stones that are local. With the attempt at national homogeneity in taste** everyplace has its local specialty.
Look around – what is common? I loved the dry stone walls in Maine.
**(big biz loves the economy of scale for production and advertising… “a thneed is what everyone needs!”
Ramalama
I think I am just too god**mned lazy to do much of anything outside in my yard, but your work is masterful. So so good and interesting.
Ramalama
@Quinerly:
Great idea.
Glidwrith
@Quinerly: I like this idea. I attempted a drip system some years ago and pretty much failed. Books often don’t communicate the pitfalls!
stinger
Really lovely, local materials, low water needs, great for the planet as well as for the eyes — and someday for the palate!
The tall yellow and pink-coral plants in the first and final photos — agastache?
Please share photos again next year when things have grown even more!
way2blue
StringOnAStick you have a gift! What a lovely backyard. A couple nuts & bolts questions: What do you use for mulch? And. In the first photo it *looks* like you’ve espaliered the fruit trees. Yes?
Our main drip irrigation lines are 1/2 inch, but the lines to individual plants are 1/4 inch (we installed the rudiments years ago). It works fine except when local varmints want water and bite through the thin lines. Also. I found 1/4 inch soaker line that we now use for the iris beds and a planting area adjacent to the deck. Planning to shift our lawn (which is now mostly clover & blue-star creeper to Native Mow Free sod this winter. If the gophers approve…
StringOnAStick
Thanks everyone, I appreciate your comments and I will try to answer everyone’s questions. I should admit here that I worked two summers for the first xeriscape landscaper in the Fort Collins, CO area when my hydrogeology career failed in the recessions of the early 1990’s, and that I where I really sharpened my skills plus learned how to do drip irrigation. This house’s yard has proved to be the culmination of decades of learning and thanks to being retired now, I had the time to really make it what I wanted it to be.
@Gloria DryGarden: Yes, I’ve been a High Country Gardens customer since the mid 1990’s, and this yard contains a lot of their plants. My prior gardening experience was the alkaline clay soils of the Colorado Front Range area, but here it is very sandy and water just drains away so quickly, so I had to adjust the spacing of my drip irrigation system. The soft yellow mound in the middle are 3 varieties of Kudos brand Agastaches. I grew a number of Desert Sunrise agastaches from seed that you can see in the older beds but the big hummingbird draw is the Red Birds in a Tree plants (HCG has this). The light blue is either blue flax, a really tall local wildflower variety, or a groundcover lithodoria, a shrublet I saw on the Oregon coast that does OK in the interior here. It’s woody and evergreen. I started a bunch of Cheyenne Sunset echinacea from seed, no Princes Plume though I think I could get one in there. I have a sweet cherry bare root tree coming this spring for the last spot I have left for a fruit tree.
StringOnAStick
@Suburban Mom: Garden husbands are the best! We help each other with our projects and thinking through ideas. Our spouses think we get each other a little wound up on big ideas though!
StringOnAStick
@Quinerly: I think that’s a great idea!
StringOnAStick
@sab: There was some planning involved but I’ve done enough of these kinds of projects that I don’t need to map it out anymore; it just comes from experience. Because it is so dry here in the summer, you have to plan for proper irrigation or you’ll just have dry dust and no plants.
StringOnAStick
@J.: The trick with rabbits and deer is planting things they don’t like, so strong smelling stuff like lavender (it has to have good drainage or it will die over the winter, so plant it on mounds in the NE), agastaches, things in the salvia family. Both of the last two groups of plants have varieties that will handle the wetter climate of the NE. Another suggestion is perennial herbs like sage (in the salvia family, and lots of decorative varieties of culinary sage), rosemary (varieties down to zone 6 are available), thyme. The previously mentioned High Country Gardens lets you filter for how much water a plant requires and also for if it is deer and rabbit resistant, so that’s a place to look for ideas too. I stick with low water to xeric plants since that’s my local climate.
StringOnAStick
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s not much work at all thanks to having drip irrigation and not overhead sprinklers; the latter keeps weeds coming up. Weed seeds are typically very small so they don’t have a lot of energy in them and have to get to sun pretty quickly, so mulch helps. I mulch using the fine grained compost the city landfill makes here from yard waste, and every 2 years I get some delivered and top it up. That helps too. It’s not the wonderful crumbly “real” compost that you make in a bin and is a lot of ground up wood and brush, but it knits together and provides a pretty stable surface layer until the squirrels start burying acorns like they are now. My biggest weed is getting all the oak sprouts out in the spring but they’re easy to see. I spend more time primping and deadheading than I do weeding, and the irrigation system handles the rest. I have a 10′ by 10′ veggie garden bed too that wasn’t in any of the photos, having a smart controller and reconfiguring a system of shrublers and drip emitters every year to that year’s planting scheme plus lots of mulch keeps that low maintenance too.
StringOnAStick
@Suzanne: Thank you, coming from an architect and design professional that means a lot! I mixed the materials types quite a bit and while that may be a no no to some, I think it adds something. I filled in the wider spaces between the flagstones with rounded large pebbles that I pounded into place; the garden husband said it added a touch of whimsy, so I whimsied the hell out of the last bit of flagstone and rock walls I built. A real flagstone project requires a stone saw and cutting and fitting a lot to get tight joints but I did not have access to such a machine nor the skill to use it, so I was careful when I selected flagstone pieces at the stone seller, then made cardboard cutouts of the remaining pieces I needed to finish it and took those with me to buy the last few needed pieces.
StringOnAStick
@Kristine: Watching the pollinators move in has been great, especially all these tiny native ones and the local bumblebees. A neighbor 2 houses away has a couple of bee hives so I keep large trays of gravel filled with water for them. The gravel makes sure they don’t drown when they land in the water to get a drink, so they can dry off and fly away. I need to keep some trays of mud for the mason bees to encourage them to nest in the yard.
Making habitat for pollinators to live in is good too. All the nooks and cranies in the basalt block walls provide that, and I keep piles of sticks for them and don’t rake up the leaves in the woodsy areas until the spring so they have a place to overwinter. I leave most of the plants standing all winter too, for that reason. Agastaches are more likely to survive a colder winter if you don’t cut them back until spring, and these are hummingbird magnets that I always make sure to have a number of those growing.
StringOnAStick
@Ceci7: I have had good luck with growing blue gramma varieties that have been slightly adapted for garden use, though no one sells them here because they say they don’t work in this short season area (90 day growing season, so my veggie gardening methods are a whole different post). I’ve grown the HCG blue gramma varieties “Blonde Ambition” and “ZigZag” and their dwarf native oat grass (Poa segunda); all are very nice looking plus low water use (most ornamental grasses are more water hungry) and I will be dividing plants and increasing their number in the front yard this spring for sure. The seed heads on the blue gramma types always get people’s attention.
StringOnAStick
@Gloria DryGarden: Also, yes, that it hopflower oregano that you are seeing. Another fun variety of ornamental oregano is Kent Beauty but it is a bit less hardy and can die back a lot some winters. Emerald Falls is a lovely variety too. People should grow more ornamental oregano, they are lovely.
StringOnAStick
@MelissaM: Ah, getting rid of the grass, yeah that was a thing for sure. Most of the lawn was dead here when we moved in, so 70% was easy to just scrape away all the roots with a rake, but not all of course. In the front yard I hired someone to use a sod cutter and get rid of it, then dug up the stragglers. In the back yard, where these photos were taken, there was more living grass because of the sun protection some areas had. As a newly retired person and a garden fanatic, I spent a lot of days sitting on the ground, peeling it up using a hori hori garden knife. That was relatively easy because the orginal sod had a plastic mesh on the bottom to hold it together for laying it out, and a layer of peat moss that the grass had barely bothered to grow into, so it peeled up pretty easily. The fact that this plastic mesh is everywhere is really disgusting environmentally though. I turned it over to let it dry out in the hot sun, and then whacked the dirt out of it with my trowel or garden knife. This was the first summer we were here and I was on a mission to get the yard in shape, so I’d sit there and whack the dirt out, otherwise I’d have to haul it all to the landfill because sod is so heavy with the soil still in it. It also had a lot of good organic matter in it, and the soils here desperately need more organics.
This detail leads to a story. My garden husband lives behind us, and he and his partner moved in a few months after we did. They spent their first summer noting that my husband would leave on his mountain bike every day and I would go in the backyard and pound on the ground for hours, so they figured I was definitely not quite right mentally. It took awhile before they told me that story!
StringOnAStick
@Trivia Man: I love those dry stone walls in the NE too. There’s a similar version here but because basalt breaks in much less uniform ways than the NE slate and granite, they aren’t as uniform as the NE walls. I have always loved building with stone in the garden though and have done it in every yard we’ve had. In Colorado I used sandstone for flagstone and rounded cobbles for features.
This part of Oregon and most of Oregon actually is covered by flood basalts, huge sheets from lave that oozed over the land relatively recently in geologic terms. You don’t have to dig more than a foot or two down to get into bedrock layers of massive to fractured basalt, so planting a tree or digging a posthole here is a real challenge. Many of the old fence lines have “post” made of tall cubes of wood filled with chunks of basalt to make them heavy enough to attach fence wire to, simply because in some places it is impossible to pound metal fence posts into the ground.
Gloria DryGarden
Do you have perennial weeds like bindweed to contend with?
StringOnAStick
@Glidwrith: Yeah, the main pitfall is using that 1/4″ stuff in the landscape, it just doesn’t hold up. The drip materials at the big box stores are poor quality too. I use stuff from Drip Works in CA or Ewing, which has a local store here. Landscape pros do NOT use that big box store stuff, they order it or go to the local landscape pro store!
Drip irrigation is tinker toys for adults, but it really helps to have someone show you the ropes, then it is pretty easy and only limited by your imagination and understanding what the parts and fittings can and can’t do. Any place I had to run a line under a walk way to get it into a bed that needed it, I dug a trench and ran the tubing inside 3/4″ PVC to protect it from getting crushed by the weight of the overlying soil and path materials.
There is a part you can buy now that converts an existing sprinkler head attachment point into where you can attach drip irrigation tubing. It contains the necessary pressure reducer; note that regular lawn irrigation system pressures will destroy the drip emitters in a couple of years and your system will fail. You have to think about just how much water a converted bed will get if the rest of that zone is only being watered a few minutes each time that zone is on. I try to mitigate this when I’ve set this up for others by using much higher emitter flow rates (5 gpm instead of 1 or 2) and spacing the emitters much closer together. It’s something you learn by experience. When we changed our entire yard to a drip system, I had the 6 irrigation valves replaced with low pressure valves since the originals were failing anyway, so I didn’t have to use the converter system in this yard.
StringOnAStick
@stinger: Yes, agastaches, the new shorter Kudos varieties. The yellow one seems to be the most robust. The pink and coral one is nice too.
I’m planning on doing a video next year to send to Gardeners World just to show the British how we do it here in the desert! I will take more photos for here too, plus I planted a ton of mini heirloom daffodils and species tulips in this new bed, so that will be fun to make a record of too.
StringOnAStick
@way2blue: I love your plans for your lawn! Native plants means more pollinators are thriving. Yes, the pear is on an espalier, now with 3 horizontal bamboo poles instead of the 2 shown in the photos. I nicked the trunk lower down above a bud on each side and that made it sprout two lower branches. The peach will be a standard and not on an espalier.
I use the fine compost the local landfill makes from yard waste for mulch. It is sort of compost, not the crumbly good stuff you make in a bin since it is mostly ground up wood and if you tried to use it strictly as compost the excess amount of unrotted wood would tie up the soil bacteria and starve the plants, but it makes a good mulch that knits together and stays in place once it has been on the ground for a half a season. The fines wash through and help this extremely low in organic matter soil we have here. You can not add enough compost and manure here, it is so sandy so much just washes away but I am slowly getting “real” soil to develop in our veggie garden.
StringOnAStick
@Gloria DryGarden: One of the things I truly love about here is no bindweed! Apparently it doesn’t thrive here because I have yet to see it. The most annoying thing is a tiny groundcover spurge that blends in with the color of the soil. Growing up in Grand Jct, I hate, hate hate bindweed!
Dan B
Nice clean lines to your garden. I’ve got a neice in Vend and a nephew and my brother’s ex wife in Redmond. I believe they all have turf. Sad. I’m glad you don’t have red rock from thee world’s biggest repository, Burns, Oregon.
Tehanu
Wow. Just, wow! I sent the link to this post to my friend who’s also into garden landscaping, I know she’ll love it.
JAM
I love your garden! I am slowly adding beds for native plants in the lawn areas, but the fight against bermudagrass never ends. Unfortunately, it doesn’t need watering to thrive here.
mvr
Thank you for the nice posting and also all the question-answering!
StringOnAStick
@Dan B: Thanks Dan B, you’re a pro so that means a lot. It’s tricky doing strictly natives here because they want it so, so dry or else they get floppy or full of aphids from rank growth but if you want shrubs or trees, it’s hard not to have too much water for the natives; this was the lesson I learned in the front where I tried to go strictly natives but add some service berry trees. I’m still trying to get that yard where I’m satisfied with it I envy your green gardens you’ve shown us. I’ve always lived in some form of high desert so the green West of the Cascades still thinks me like a foreign country.
Redmond is definitely drier than Bend, and every yard I see up there is even more lush bluegrass. Too bad the season is too short for the turf grasses being developed from blue gramma. This region is not going to be able to maintain the current growth rate without some big changes in water use patterns.
StringOnAStick
@JAM: i remember Bermuda grass from briefly living in central CA as a kid, that stuff is tough and it sends out tillers like vines to engulf and devour more land; edging won’t defeat it because the rollers climb right over it!
StringOnAStick
@Tehanu: If your friend is into low water use plants, I can provide some sources and book titles to look at.