Tag: garden

A Small Garden Victory, a Formal Plan

I have a boxwood update for you. They bounced back! Two years ago, the hedges flanking the front walkway were overgrown and encroaching upon the sidewalk. I pruned them back, hard. Last year, they looked better. This year, they’re fully filled in!

So now that I’ve had a little success in the boxwood department, maybe I’m ready to go all-in? I’m in planning mode, wanting to work on the front garden this year. I was out there all day every day last spring and summer, cleaning things up, moving and planting. There are two distinct sides to our front yard, since we have an asymmetrical house on an asymmetrical lot. The smaller side has a blue gazing ball on a small fluted column with a ring of flagstone around it. Near the gate, there is a dwarf lilac, a rose bush, and clematis that climbs and covers the fence. It was never very clear what was supposed to be going on in the middle portion, and I let things grow last year to see what they were. Guess what grew? Weeds! There are also some scraggly bushes near the house that I’m not a fan of, and I’m thinking it’s a good time to go at it with an overall plan.

I’ve been reading up on various styles, researching period Victorian gardens, and I’m drawn to formal layouts. Do a quick search of “parterre” on Pinterest, and there are tons of inspiring images.

The layout is really the key though, not necessarily the hedging. Here’s another example with just a few boxwood balls.

I can’t think of any other formal front gardens in the area, but maybe that’s not a big deal? Our house, with our next door neighbor’s, are the only ones with a front fence too, and it’s not like there’s all that much cohesiveness on my street as it is now anyway. I love the idea of a centering a flowering tree.

Images: Formal Front Garden Parterre — Brocaatje Landelijk Brocante Wonen • Garden Design Dublin

April 10, 2017
Tending to the Climbing Roses

We have a bunch of vines and climbers in the garden. Autumn sweet clematis on the front fence, grapevines on the back. Honeysuckle on a bird feeder post, ivy on the neighbor’s house, and a newly planted climbing hydrangea to grow on the fence behind the kids’ play area.

And then there are the roses! Mine are not so photogenic right now because they’re not in bloom, so let’s pretend they look like these David Austin garden roses.

There was an arch between the front yard the side garden with roses, and we removed them. That was a mistake. The thorns were pretty scary and encroaching upon us as we passed, and Brandon was worried about the kids getting hurt each time they passed through. I wish I would have learned how to properly prune the roses back and maybe it would have been okay, but we cut the canes back and killed the whole thing. We’ve kept them alive in other spots though! By the front door, the cutest storybook effect comes from the little pink roses growing up the side of the porch. There’s another pink one where the side yard meets the back, and two yellow climbing roses by the garage to soften the expanse of wall. Those were growing on trellises that have fallen apart and fallen off of the garage, so we cut the roses back last summer out of necessity, but not so far back that we killed them (hooray!). I need repair or replace the trellises and attach them more securely. The roses are small, but they’re ready to be trained soon. I think.

Training roses. Pruning them. Both things I had no idea how to do! But I’ve been watching tutorials and reading tips and tricks, and I feel like I have a rudimentary grasp on the techniques now. The best time to work on them is late autumn or winter, so hopefully after I can get out there and get to work, they’ll be looking really good again next year. (Fingers crossed.) If you have any favorite books, videos, or sites, I’d love to hear about them.

August 8, 2016
Garden Gate Inspiration

When I was a kid, we had a dog that would escape our yard every chance she got. Each time, she’d be found blocks away. I didn’t have any other dogs to compare her to, so I just assumed that while cats can go outside and find their way back, dogs take off and go. Then we adopted Murray in 2008. And he would stay put! Brandon was like, duh. Dogs do that. And I thought, not in my experience, they don’t!

All of this is to say that there is no gate between the front and back yard here. There is an arch and a sense of passage, but no gate. We do have a cast iron fence around the front with a gate that we can close, but there are still means of escape through the adjoining neighbor’s property if one is determined. We thought for sure when we moved here that we would need to add something ASAP for the dog but when it didn’t prove to be a problem, we never got around to it.

But when we do…

For sure, I’m dreaming of something like these for the transition from front to back yard. But is it crazy to think that one would look good at the back gate too? I mean, you’d open it, and boom: hello, parked cars. But maybe it hints at something more interesting beyond? We spend a lot more time hanging out in the yard with the gate closed than we do actually opening it and walking through. And I imagine it would be a nice view from the other direction, when you’re walking into the yard, towards the house.

Yep. Just read “Ralph Lauren” as “Your Name Here.” Welcome home.

Images: Frank Kovalcheck • Remodelista • Martha Stewart Weddings • Apartment Therapy • Canadian Gardening • Ralph Lauren

July 14, 2016
The Lay of the Land

OK, done with the front of the house! For now at least. I’m eager to get out there and make some changes and additions, but the perennial beds have been cleaned up, the boxwoods trimmed and thinned, and everything fertilized and mulched. We’re good.

Onward, to the back! But first, a layout of the property. The lot (50’x145′) and house footprint are to scale, though the details on the house itself are not. They’re close, but the roof lines are definitely a little wonky (the house is not entirely the odd assemblage of angles it appears to be!). I gave up on getting them exactly right because the focus is on the overall land here.

There’s a 3′ purple cast iron fence out front, a 5′ black cast iron fence next to one neighbor, a 4′ wooden fence next to the other, and 6′ wooden privacy fences elsewhere. None of them match, none of them are in perfect shape, but they’re there. The boxwood hedges, we’ve talked about. Everything else is garden space, aside from the parkway, the small patch of grass out front, and the flagstone patio in the back.

Our neighbors in the greystone are clearing out their yard and putting in a paver patio. They had some flagstone that matches ours, so we’re taking it (thank you!). The plan is to either create a small patio, use it for stepping stone paths, or both.

The first option would be solely for the kids and their friends. We have a table and chairs on our patio, and there’s a kids’ picnic table off to the side. It’s cute and they like to sit there because it feels secluded next to the fence, beneath a row of lilac trees, but it’s just dirt and mulch beneath the table right now. I feel like we could turn it into a pretty cute space! It would only be useful for the next five years or so, but I’m OK with that.

Option number two would be to make a lounge area. There’s a dirt path to the egg chair right now from where foot traffic has trampled the plants. Go with what has already been started and turn it into a paved area, or just make a stone path? If we’re going to do a patio, we’ll have to do a lot more planning before we can get started, but if it’s just a path, I can dive right in and get it done.

Kids’ area, lounge area, or a combination of both? I’m thinking the way to go may be to do a stone path to the chair, leave the rest alone, and then a small patio area beneath the kids’ picnic table. I’m heading out now to figure it out.

June 7, 2016
The Garden: A Timeline of Neglect

2013: We had just moved in. Everything had been tended to through the spring and early summer and there wasn’t much to do! The neighbor tells us the previous owner was always out there working on things like it was her full-time job. Come on, we think. How hard can it be?

2014: I was pregnant with kid #3. Did I really want to be out there gardening in the heat, in my third trimester? No thanks. Brandon mowed the front, and I did the bare minimum, maintenance-wise in the garden. Plus I was gone for much of that summer! New York, France, Morocco, and most glamorous of all, Wisconsin. The house still looked pretty good out there while we focused on the inside.

2015: Here’s the thing about pregnancies. When all goes well, you have a baby at the end! Going from two kids to three was a tough transition, and I figured the garden could wait. The boxwood hedge got its terrible haircut, but not much else happened out there.

2016: Well look at that. The garden waited for me!

You already know that I spent a full day trimming those boxwood hedges out front. I went out and worked on them for another three hours over the weekend, putting the grand total at 11 hours. And they look amazing! Kidding. They look sparse and uneven, though to be fair, they were uneven when we bought the place. I can only claim credit for thinning the poor things out. I’m aiming to reduce the height, especially of the larger side, and it’s going to take a few years to happen. Seeing them rebound after the awful hack job they got last spring has given me more confidence in working with them.

Basically, the plan is to thin them down to allow light and air to reach the inside. Cut out the dead wood (this helps with the thinning), and the prune the tallest branches back to where I want them height to eventually be. New buds will grow from there, and I’ll have to repeat the process over several years. They should look good by, say, 2019? Oof. But ripping them out and starting over (as has been suggested to me, more than once) would take even longer. We’re trying this and it’s gonna work! I watched a few how-to videos, so I’m pretty much an expert now.

We have kept everything as it was planted, so I’m not even into the fun creative part of gardening yet. Some of the plants and pairings that are here already, I love. Boxwood hedges line the house (much less overgrown than the ones in front) with peonies behind. The side has an awesome mix of hostas, some three or four feet across. Roses climb the front porch and allium peek out in the perennial bed out front. But then there are the things that died. Bare spots where I know annuals had been planted. Little rose bushes that we were apparently supposed to cover with styrofoam hats? (I had no idea.) The swath of dirt where the kids have forged a path to the egg chair that they think of as a play house. The only thing we chose to remove was a climbing rose over an arch, leading from the front yard to the back. It was magical in bloom, but one had to be careful in passing by to avoid the thorns, and it proved too treacherous for the kids. It only exists in this photo now.

The garden does not look awful out there, but it definitely doesn’t look as good as it used to. But it will and hopefully even better! I’ve been out there gardening like it’s my full-time job.

And I haven’t even gotten into the side yard or the back yet.

May 30, 2016
A ‘New Horizon’ for the Front of the House

I spent a full day yesterday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. pruning boxwoods. That’s insane. I’m assuming it’s faster if you are a more experienced gardener, but I was trying to do a very thorough job of removing dead wood from the interior of the hedges. (My arms bear many scratches today.) The boxwoods were butchered a bit last spring in an attempt to reduce their size, but they’ve filled in enough to move on to phase two, which is hopefully making them more dense.

Last year:

This year:

They’re not great, but they’re improving. I’m going to fertilize them and add mulch, and then be patient.

There was another big change from last year to this year — one that was beyond our control.

I miss that tree so much. It was on the parkway and the village removed it because of emerald ash borer infestation (though the tree still looked perfectly healthy). It came down in only 20 minutes, and instantly our house was bare. They did plant a new tree yesterday though!

Can you even see it? It’s a wee baby elm tree, so they traded one doomed variety for another, but it’s a new hybrid (“new horizon”) that is supposed to be resistant to Dutch elm disease. Here’s a head-on shot.

Grow little tree, grow! (You too, boxwoods. Fill in.)

May 26, 2016