Gardening Grandma

Greetings friends! I've been promising for years to make a blog for our garden to share its evolution from year to year. It's about time I kept my promise-- so here it is!

Before we begin, please notice our nifty sign. We are very proud of that. A few years ago, we had our property certified as an urban wildlife sanctuary through the Humane Society. Why? I'll explain that at the end of this post. For now, let's continue our tour, shall we?

We bought our house during the winter of 2003. It had been abandoned for 5-years at the time that we bought it and it was in terrible shape. The inside had to be gutted to the studs and completely remodeled. Inside, everything is new--- but that is another story. This blog is about our garden.

On the outside it was also a hideous mess. This house is on a corner lot, so we have a neighbor to the right, but not on the left. The left-hand side of the property is slightly elevated, as you will see in other pics.

See that white van in the front driveway on the right? Well, as a corner lot, this house originally had no driveway there. The original driveway was on the left side of the property near an old detached garage.

At some point in the history of the house, someone thought it would be a great idea to make another driveway in the front and to make it curl around the house and join the other driveway, so that you could actually drive in one way and exit the other.

While they were at it, they went nuts with the asphalt and concrete, and extended it ALL OVER the property. There was not one speck of grass in the backyard, it was all asphalt and concrete in crappy condition, with weeds growing out of the cracks. HIDEOUS.

One of our first "VISIONS" for the property was to get rid of the asphalt, build a deck on that side of the house, and to enclose everything on that side with a fence both for privacy and to contain our dogs.

So my husband went out there in the spring and started breaking up the asphalt with a sledge hammer and crow bars. Yes, he did this himself. The man is insane. Ya gotta love him.

See the mostly dead tree in the pic above? That was growing on the fence line so we had that and a few others cut down, then Jeff rented a stump grinder from Home Depot and ground the stump down so that it wouldn't interfere with making the fence.

This pic shows where the asphalt driveway curled around the back side of the house and met the other driveway on the side. The gate where you come in from the remaining driveway is in this spot now. It's how you enter the yard from the side or the back. The driveway leading up to this on the side is all that remains of the original asphalt and concrete.

This shows the process started of breaking up the asphalt driveway. YIKES! My hubby is a madman. What did we do with all of that concrete and asphalt once Jeff broke it up?

We found a company that gives special deals on dumpsters if all that is going in it is asphalt and concrete-- as they recycle it and use it to repair roads. So we had a DUMPSTER FILLING PARTY during a July heat wave. Want to know who your true friends are-- have a dumpster-filling party in 95 degree heat and see who shows up.

We all wore work gloves and filled wheelbarrows with asphalt and then emptied them into the dumpsters. It took two days. Half a dozen friends stayed. Bless their hearts. Our garden will ALWAYS be their garden too.

This shows the front of the house with the driveway removed and the privacy fence started. Obviously, the deck hasn't been built yet. It is now and is connected to the house on this side. There is now another section of gate going across the front at about the point where the enclosed porch connects to the house. The front path extends up to the gate, which has flowers growing all around it. Thus, at this point, you can't see into our backyard from the street and the dogs cannot get out of that area as there are fences installed at any point where they could escape.

Here are two views of the side yard BEFORE the dry stone retaining wall was put in. When we bought the house, there were railroad ties along the area of elevation. They were ancient and loaded with graffiti. When DH removed them, the soil had been in that position for so long that it just stayed like that.

This is the left side of the property, the corner side. You can't see it in the pic of the house that I put at the beginning.

I ALWAYS wanted a house on a corner lot because of the landscaping opportunity. It is like having two front yards. When I first looked at this property, I could "see" a circular path here, with a huge center garden and flowers growing along the retaining wall and spilling over the sides. I could see it. I wanted it. And I did it! LOL

Jeff working on extending the retaining wall around the front of the house to enclose front flower bed. You can see in the background that my circular garden hadn't been created yet, so this was early in the process.

Here's a view of the side of the house after the retaining wall was finished and the garden started. In order to make my circular garden I had to dig up all of the grass and weeds over every square inch of this elevated side yard. I did this over a period of weeks, a little bit each day, all by myself. Yes, I really wanted this!!

Neighbors would drive by and stop. "What are ya doing?," they'd ask. "Well," I'd reply, "I'm digging up my lawn to make a magical, circular garden." They'd drive away scratching their heads. Thus we were identified as the neighborhood freaks almost from the moment we moved in.

At present, the circular path is complete and has off-shoots that connect it to the remaining driveway in back and a path in front of the house. There's a small pond too and several places to sit.

I love a "wild" look -- sort of English cottage style. I planted a lot of indigenous flowers and also stuff that supports bees, hummingbirds, song birds and other critters.

Intermixed with the flowers, most of them perennial, are my veggies and herbs, places to sit, annual flowers in pots, and other treasures. Angels, gargoyles, fairies and whimsical garden statues peek out from among the plants and surprise you as you turn corners and explore the plantings.

Tall flowers such as Pacific Giant Delphiniums and climbing vines such as clematis are against the house on this side. The circle includes a lot of easy-care plants such as Black-eyed Susan's, Cone flowers, and the like. There are bird feeding stations among the plants and chipmunks have turned the retaining wall into a condo. They scurry around eating seeds that the birds drop. They are so cute!

Here's our beloved dog, Zeke, in a gardening wagon during the asphalt removal project.

Here's part of the circular garden in the late spring. The path is no longer wood chips, but stone. I changed it when we put in the little pond as the wood chips kept ending up in the pond and I was constantly skimming it.

Back in 1993, Jeff made me two of these benches out of kits he bought at Lowes. One finally broke last year but this one is hanging on.

I've tried to make this a three-season garden by planting things that flower at different times. We have beauty out here from early spring until late fall. My no-care, "Freedom" roses often have blooms on Thanksgiving that I cut for our table

Our friend Thom digging the hole for the pond back in 2009.

Roses along back fence

It is so amazing to sit out here ! I took this pic from my favorite old bench!

Zeke in the back yard. Jeff put those pavers down from the back porch to the steps for the deck.

Rake lady

yellow climbing rose on back fence

Most of our perreniels bloom in mid to late summer, so at certain stages, there is more green than color in our garden. I solve that by putting some annuals out here and there.

And this concludes our introduction! Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Regarding the urban wildlife sanctuary program............. We were told about this by a friend and jumped into action immediately.

Habitat loss is a major threat to our native birds. As a result, 50% of Connecticut’s native bird species are declining, and 17% are on the State’s Endangered, Threatened and Special Concern list. That is: 50 out of 290 regularly or annually occurring bird species in Connecticut are State-listed.

Bees, via pollination, are responsible for 15 to 30 percent of the food U.S. consumers eat. But in the last 50 years the domesticated honeybee population—which most farmers depend on for pollination—has declined by about 50 percent, scientists say. Unless actions are taken to slow the decline of domesticated honeybees and augment their populations with wild bees, many fruits and vegetables may disappear from the food supply.

What can you do? With a little effort, you can improve your property’s usefulness as a wildlife habitat, while at the same time preserving plants that are native to your state.

You don’t need a lot of space to create a garden that supports wildlife, propagates indigenous plants, and helps to increase wild honeybee populations. The humane society website has info about this program.

Gardening Grandma

Gardening Granny

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

May 11 Tour of the Garden

Monday, May 3, 2010

We've been working in the garden

Friday, April 9, 2010

The Early Years

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