A garden is art. You’re blending color, shape, texture.  You create illusions that trick the eye into following a certain line.  A garden is art.  And every aspect of a property needs to be examined for a fully successful garden.

Here is a photo of a path that goes from the front to the back.  Originally it was just grass, but we needed a path.  We were trying to solve a drainage problem as well (water in the basement) so we tackled both at once.  Beneath the gravel is a ditch.  We dug it big enough to hold a bed of pea stone and a perforated drainage pipe.  That was covered with a layer of garden fabric to both keep the two kinds of gravel separate as well as to keep weeds from growing up through the gravel.   Since it’s on a hill, it transfers water wonderfully.  Problems solved.

We also wanted something to block the view between our house and the neighbors.  For both privacy (we like to keep our windows open) and because her house is bright white and it really glares into our windows.  Solution:  a trellis.

It works great (well, almost).  We planted bourbon roses, and when they were in full bloom, not only did we have privacy, but with the windows open the house was filled with the most delightful scent.  Heaven.

The problem is that the roses aren’t evergreen and…. roses are difficult.  They take an awful lot of attention.  And climbing, for roses, doesn’t actually mean that they can climb on their own.  They get tall enough, but have to be attached.  So we started looking for something more evergreen with a climbing habit.  Sherry recently decided on Confederate Jasmine, based on advice from a friend.  We’ll let you know how it goes.

Moving to the other side of the house – we needed paths there as well.   Remember the muddy hill?  We needed to solve that problem going down the hill on both sides of the house.  Below is a photo of our solution.  We had originally considered using the same kind of stone for all of the paths, but we finally decided that, not only did we want the variety, but also that there wasn’t one color that worked for every situation.  So for the slope, we built some 2×4 forms and used a flat stone for filler.

Although you can’t see it in this picture, just on the left, on the other side of Gus, we used cement (yea cement) for a few sections before changing over to stone.  We embedded the top of the cement with stone so that it would be a more solid area.  Walk a little further down that path, and it changes to stone – but with a twist.  I wanted to make it look like it was a really old sidewalk.  We’ve tried to make the whole garden seem old, which it does (based on comments we hear from visitors).   In this case, we took old brick and placed it intermittently along the path.  Judge for yourself if it worked or not, from the picture on the right.

At the back of the garden is another path, of the same type, that leads to a freestanding trellis and a bench.  If you remember when we were discussing what we liked in a garden, we mentioned secret spots and paths that make you wonder where they go.  This is one of those paths.  Out of all the reactions we get in our garden, when coming to this pathour favorite is “Where does that go?”   Well, it doesn’t go anywhere.  About 8 feet past the trellis is the fence that separates us from our neighbors.  The Leyland Cypresses that we planted for privacy take up a good portion of that 8 feet.  Still, it’s a nice little spot.  We did do one thing behind the trellis though.  I put in a 12′ x 6′ cement pad.  We have one of those large, break apart plastic compost bins.  It sits on one end of the pad, hidden by the trellis.  We just lift the lid off and add organic matter to compost.  Once a month, we lift up the whole box (it has no bottom), move it to the other side of the pad, and shovel the composting material back into the box, thus turning it.  Composting will be the subject of  more posts.  Leave it to say that we have the compost box, a compost tumbler, a couple of  rain barrels and a worm bin.  Next Post:  Art in the Garden.

Filed under: Our Garden