The Making of a Garden

As the garden grows, so grows the gardener."
- Unknown

It all began with a tree. A maple to be specific. A maple from a seed my husband picked up on a walk one day and planted in a pot when he got home. After about 10 years of growth, we liberated the small tree from its pot and planted it in the grass parking strip in front of our house.

Initially I was only going to have a small circular patch cleared of grass around the trunk. Mowing and edging grass too near a tree’s trunk can cause detrimental damage to the bark layer and shorten the life of the tree so it’s always good to have a safe zone of ground cleared of grass all the way around a tree’s trunk. To create the safe zone, I did the cover-to-smother* method since I refuse to dig out turf and I didn’t want to cause damage to the tree’s surface roots by trying to remove the existing turf.

So, in 2010 I laid cardboard over the grass around the tree trunk, covered it with a thin layer of mulch and let nature (moisture, worms and soil life) do its thing, decomposing the turf, cardboard and mulch into nice aerated soil.

Sometime later in 2011(below), I decided to enlarge the area around the tree and fill it with perennials thereby reducing the amount of grass overall and so a new garden began to take shape. The bricks you see were holding down some wire panels from an old compost bin, intended to keep neighborhood animals from digging into the mulch and exposing the cardboard.

Small in its infancy, as gardens often do, it expanded over the years to come. By 2013 (below) my plants needed more room. So, I gathered more cardboard and widened the edges,

…and covered the cardboard with more mulch.

In the next photo you can see those same bricks used from the first photo to hold down the edge of the cardboard and give a neater looking delineation between the mulch and grass.

Then that same winter, I decide we need a walkway from the side walk across to the street. Yep, I lay more cardboard and topped it with 18-inch square pavers and side dressed the balance with more mulch and left it alone for the winter. It really couldn’t be easier. I didn’t try to level the pavers at this point. The next summer, once it was all decomposed underneath them, I did any leveling adjustments as needed, which were few.

In 2014 I needed more room again. As the plants grow or I add more plants, I just expand the edges to accommodate. It may be slow, but I think this is the easiest way to carve away grass footage and gain garden space and beauty. It does take some months for it to become a plant-able soil, so think in advance of buying the plants or making divisions of your own holdings. Do the smothering 6 months or more before you want to plant. Your microclimate and weather conditions will determine how fast the decomposition takes to become plant-able.

This time I used more bricks to hold down an edge. It looked better and once it was all decomposed, I removed them.

Now it’s Autumn of 2019 and I decide to get rid of this last remaining strip of grass between the garden and the sidewalk seen below. It is a nuisance to trim and the plants need more room. I could of course cut back the plants but I’d rather have less grass.

When working against a concrete edge like this sidewalk, it is important to get the cardboard tucked down an inch or so between the concrete and soil. Use a flat blade from a spade or edger to pry the turf away from the concrete edge to make it easier to tuck the cardboard in.

The goal is to completely cover the grass. If it has any light peeking through any edge it will find it and keep growing.

It is also important to overlap each piece by a few inches for the same reason. Every bit of grass must be covered so no light can get through.

I marked the locations of our underground sprinkler heads with rocks, so in the summer when it’s time to start watering again I can easily find them and carefully dig to expose them. By then the grass and cardboard should be completely or mostly decomposed and easy to poke around in.

In some of the earlier photos above you will notice the cardboard is dry. I soaked it after laying it, but before covering it with mulch. Now I prefer to soak it before laying. I soak it in a big plastic tub, but if you can’t, then you can let a sprinkler spray it for a while to wet it. I think wet card board is easier to lay and conform to the ground undulations. Wind doesn’t tend to shift wet cardboard around either before you can get a heavy mulch on top of it. But be careful not to get it too wet. Sopping wet cardboard tears easily and can be harder to get it from the tub to where you want it.

That is a large size concrete mixing tub. It held all the cardboard I needed to do this strip. I let it soak for about an hour while I gathered the tools I needed for the project. A wheelbarrow would be a great choice too.

I like to put mulch over wet cardboard rather than dry. I don’t want the dry cardboard to pull moisture from the mulch. The key here is everything needs to stay completely covered and moist, so your rainy season is good to take advantage of when timing your project.

The mulch you use can be bag-bought or your own home-made compost. I have used both, whichever I have on hand. It just needs a fairly thick layer on the cardboard so it all stays wet. You could also use wood chip. Mulch, compost, wood chip…it doesn’t really matter. Just use whatever you want the end result to be.

That thin edge of cardboard will remain showing for the winter and possibly into late winter/spring, until it falls apart. It may not look completed or beautiful for those months but it’s a tradeoff I am willing to take rather than dig turf. I could try to cover it with mulch but it will just roll off onto the sidewalk and I don’t want to have to keep sweeping it, and if I still had all those bricks, I would use them to make a nicer looking edge until it is all decomposed.

When my tree leaves begin to fall, I will cover it with them too, adding to the layers, keeping it all moist underneath.

 This is my version of working smarter not harder.

So if you’ve got grass you want to replace with a garden, consider rummaging around in cardboard recycling bins or saving your home delivery boxes. A new garden is only limited by the imagination.

*Cover-to-smother…a super important side note:

When creating a garden close to existing trees, it is critical to use compost or mulch NOT dirt or bagged soil. Dirt and soil will build up the ground level and suffocate the surface roots. Surface roots breath and absorb moisture from the ground surface. When they get buried deeply, they try to regain surface. They can circle the tree trunk and as the trunk continues to grow in circumference, it will be strangled by the root that is circling it. That is called girdling. Girdling will kill any tree. As the trunk is girdled the bark gets compressed closer and tighter to the heartwood. The cells between the heartwood and bark are how nutrients and water get transported up to the canopy and leaves. Once the bark is compressed so tightly to the heartwood, nutrients and sap cannot flow. A thin layer of cardboard, compost or mulch will decompose, keeping the soil level that the tree is used to constant. Additionally, never pile more than an inch of compost/mulch over the top of the cardboard. I see folks all around my local neighborhoods piling up bark mulch or wood chip or compost or soil in huge deep piles way high up against the trunks of their trees. See the two examples following below. This will eventually kill the tree. 

 Please never do this (see above) to any tree. Ever. When planting a potted tree, always plant it at the soil level it is in the pot. Dig your planting hole 3 times the width of the pot but no deeper than the soil level in the pot. When adding mulch never pile up more than an inch deep close to the trunk or within the drip zone. A drip zone is the circumference below the tree’s canopy marked by rain dripping off the edges of the branches, straight down.

Tree trunks have a natural flair at the base. Tree flair must be maintained for a healthy tree (above). Some trees exhibit more flair than others.

I know this is a longer post than is my usual and I am grateful you read it to the end. A few of my previous posts in this blog touch on this method of grass removal, but I have been photo-documenting the making of this garden over the years to make a more complete account. I hope this is understandable and encouraging for you to create more garden space easily. No grub hoe needed.

Any questions? Please comment below.

Thanks for reading. Cheers!

In Bloom in my Garden Today: Alyssum, Aster, Coreopsis ‘moonbeam’, Crocus, Cuphea vermillionaire, Cyclamen hederifolium, Daisy, Eupatorium rugosum ‘Chocolate’ (joe pye weed), Fuchsia, Geum, Heuchera, Kirengeshoma palmata, Kniphofia ‘Echo Mango’, Lavender, Nepeta ‘six hills giant’ (catmint), Phygelius, Salvia garanitica ‘black and blue’, Solanum crispum

Author’s photos