Grass, Grass and More Grass

“Think back to the first time you explained to a nongardener that the lawn is just the place you stand when looking at your plants”

~ Steve Aitken, editor of Taunton’s Fine Gardening magazine

This place has a ton of lawn space. There is a huge strip of grass along the street, and being a corner lot, it wraps around the corner and goes partway up the perpendicular street. Then there is an upper strip along the front of the house. Then there is more on the east side of the house that wraps around the back and extends partway along the south side.

I like some grass in the landscape but for us, that is way too much to maintain and mow. Currently my better half and I share the mowing and grass maintenance jobs and neither of us want it to be more than a 30 minute endeavor. I, personally would rather spend my time gardening, or hiking, kayaking, going on long walks, not tending grass. However we both want to do the mowing as part of our outdoor exercise which is why we don’t hire it out. Mowing grass is a good cardio workout in the fresh air in the sun. But 30 min or less mowing is plenty of that particular activity. And it is easier to keep a properly mulched garden watered and weed free than acres of grass.

So, one of my first priorities, after getting control of the weeds in the garden spaces and grass, was to lessen the overall amount of grass. As you have read in previous posts on my blog I have had good results in smothering grass with cardboard topped with mulch or dirt. I will be doing that again in the back and side yard as you will see later, but this street side grass is too monstrous an area to lay cardboard and paying for yards of compost would be much too costly.

So, I decided to use wood chip. Not beauty bark. Wood chip. You can read my reasons why here, but for now suffice to say ‘free’ is my kind of price. I did pay an arborist his asking price for these first 12 yards because I wanted it now, he had it now, and I wanted him to drive and dump it along the street up on the grass in a stripe as long as he could get it. Not all arborists give it away free but many do.

I didn’t want to come home to find a tall pile dumped all in one heap and in the wrong place so I was getting picky and there are times you have to pay to get things your way. Subsequent chip loads I am getting free from other local tree trimming service companies to finish the job, since 12 yards wasn’t enough and I need to thicken the layer. I tried to rake it out to 6-8 inches thick but being such a large chunky medium, grass in some areas is finding the light and pushing its way up. That happens when cardboard isn’t used underneath your mulch. Mulch or dirt over cardboard doesn’t have to be so thick as the card board does the job of cutting off all the light. Chip takes a bit more supervision to get the job done. But in the end, it will work and, in the fall, or late winter it will be ready for my planting ideas.

It took me 2 days, 6 hours each to rake all this out and wheelbarrow it around  from the main drop. And yes, I mean me, moi, by myself. I don’t often ask my better half for help doing this kind of stuff even though he is willing. The garden is my love and joy, the easy parts and the hard parts. If I can’t do the work I need to come up with a different hobby. I will give credit to where credit is due when I do ask for help, but for the most part all the work you see in my posts I have done myself unless otherwise specified.

I am toying with planting options right now. I want to plant low growing shrubs so as not to cover the beautiful rockery. Viburnum Davidii, St John’s Wort (shrubs not ground cover), Burning Bush (Euonymus compacta), Spirea, Daphne ‘Eternal Fragrance’ among others are making the list. In a few years’ time when they begin to fill in I will no doubt give you a before and after post of that area again.

And the very next day, literally barely 12 hours later, the gas company decided to do work in the area and found my lovely property the perfect place to lay their pipes as a staging area! Arrgh!!! They walked all over it, churning up the chip layer and generally messing up much of my hard work. My fear was if they churned it up it would be thinner is some areas and the grass would get through.

I did, nicely, explain how I had just finished raking all that out and my reasons for doing it and asked them please be careful. Happily, they removed their stuff and attempted to smooth it out but some damage had been done. Sigh. The churned-up areas did allow light to reach the grass under and it had started to poke up through. My next load was a finer consistency, so it compacted better to suppress the light. I piled more where I needed it. Now I can leave it all to rest and get onto other parts of the garden.

In Bloom in My Garden Today: Hebe, Shasta daisy, Cuphea “Vermillionaire”, Calendula, Rose, Hydrangea, Veronica, Dianthus, Nepeta, Gillenia, Sedum, Bletilla, Potentilla, Oriental Lily, Digitalis, Salvia,

Author’s photos

Let the Fun Begin

My favorite flower is a dandelion, because they are everywhere!

~ Garden art contest entry, age 9

We have moved. We found this garden, I mean house in March, and began moving in April. As gardeners, you know those months in late winter and early spring are crucial for getting ahead of the weed fight. And weeds did this garden space have.

So since April, as soon as it was prudent for me to get my hands in the dirt of the new grounds while the closing-of-a-house process hummed along, I have been doing weed patrol on our new-to-us 9000 sq ft corner lot. The front has a wraparound rockery that is taller than I am, sporting beautiful big boulders. The back yard is terraced with smaller rocks.

The quote above doesn’t reflect my feelings for dandelions, which were legion in number and already blooming in every part of this yard. Truly they were everywhere. When kept in check and not allowed to form seed heads, dandelion flowers provide healthy pollen and nectar for pollinators and leafy greens for people’s food source. But when allowed to spread in urban environments they are a nuisance weed.

As I was pulling dandelions, (and shrieking at those that had already turned to seed puffs) I was also discovering fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium), cleavers (Galium aparine), perennial pea (Lathyrus latifolius, which is on the Washington State Monitor list for noxious weeds), and a lot of turf grass that self-seeded in and amongst the perennials. Thankfully I have found no horsetail and only a few sprouts of English ivy.

The previous gardener put in some lovely perennial selections in the front rockery, which I will keep and perhaps divide or move to other parts of the garden. They also enjoyed self-seeding annuals like forget-me-not, Cosmos, Calendula and Nigella. 

I will keep the Calendula but reduce it to a lesser amount and collect the seeds to sow them where I want more, whereby controlling it’s spread.

I have grown Nigella before. It is also called "Love-in-a-Mist. It has a lovely flower  and the seed is used in some cultures for culinary purposes. You can control it's spread by cutting off the seed heads before they dry. If you want to save the seed for later sowing, allow them to dry on the plant naturally but remove them just as the little holes are opening on the top of the seed pod. 

Here (shown below) in the backyard terraces Nigella were allowed to self-sow and were rampant, thickly carpeting large areas with a mix of turf grass, dandelion, forget-me not and Nigella all tangling with Vinca Minor.

Out it all goes. While some gardens look lovely when annuals self-sow, they are a lot of work to keep contained and mostly look weedy to me, entangling themselves with surrounding plants. Not only that, Forget-me-not is one of those annuals that gets mildew as the plant dies down and looks ugly.

Back to the rockery in front (photo below). I will keep some of the Shasta Daisy and one or two of the Lemon Balm but cutting out quite a lot of both that have taken over and crowded out several other lovely hybrid varieties of Sage, Marjoram and Oregano. I have also pulled out Rumex which will self sow everywhere if given the chance. I will be adding in my favorites and many plant divisions I have taken from my previous garden. Yes, since the previous house is not yet listed for sale, I have been digging in my former garden but not so as to leave gaping holes. My old garden is so packed, I can easily remove favorite divisions without leaving a trace. 😊

Following posts will be the changes I make to edit this lovely garden and make it into my own. And yes, for those who know me and my methods, there will be lots of cardboard used. Good thing I have lots of packing boxes!

In bloom in my garden today: Dianthus, Veronica, Cuphea vermillionare, Hebe, rose, Shasta daisy, Calendula, Potentilla, Astrantia Major, Spirea

Author’s photos

Closing a Chapter

My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plants’ point of view.

– H. Fred Dale, Toronto Star garden writer and author of Fred Dale’s Garden Book, 1972

My blogging pen has been silent for a little while. Not that I haven’t been busy gardening. We have been busy moving. A new to us garden and house in a different city, but still in the Pacific Northwest. Since it’s a rainy morning today, I decided it was a good time to catch you up in my world.

I’ve been taking lots of pictures to show you of the new-to-me garden and the changes I am making, but haven’t taken time away from it to type up any posts.

As a start to the life transition and the turn this blog will take featuring the new garden, I thought I’d use this post as a recap and culmination of my previous garden. This first picture is of the weedy, grassy yard as it was when I bought that house, 34 years ago.

I was excited to buy my very first home all those years ago! Before this picture was taken the grass and dandelions were knee high and the shrubs were taller than me and sprawling every-which-way. You can read more about it in this earlier post. Over the years the garden ideas, successes and failures came and went, providing much education and the experiences for this blog.

This is the same yard today, pictured from roughly the same angle. All that grass gone, replaced by stone patio, retaining walls and plants, plants, and more plants! The garden now wraps around the whole house on a 5000 square foot urban lot. But you get an idea of what came out and what went in.

The posts to follow will be of my new yard. It is a tad larger sporting 9000 square feet.

Stay tuned! And thanks for reading.

In bloom in my garden today: roses, lavender, hardy geranium, cape fuchsia, heuchera, iris, nepeta, daisy, solanum crispum, wigela,

Author’s photos