The Patio!

Since it's entirely too hot to do much more that combat the crab grass these days, I'll update on the patio project... IT'S FINISHED! Yay!

We used about 3" - 4" of gravel and 1" of sand as a base. Then I set 20"x20"x2" concrete pavers to finish. The real work was regrading the back yard and trying to grow new grass in the blazing Kentucky Summer. It looks aweful right now because all the baby grass burned up in the 100 degree heat even with watering twice a day at first. Some survived so, I might see something greener in a month or so when the temperatures drop. The following pics are in progress shots showing the construction process.

Final images to come when the weather breaks and I can clean up a bit.

Garden Share

I signed up for Garden Share yesterday... I guess it's facebook for gardeners. You can find me there at http://www.garden-share.com/profile/KellPollard It's a good place to upload pictures.

The new year!

So, we ended last year with some plant beds, a fenced in yard and a new deck. We also added a pile of plants to the planting beds and haphazardly tried to make something out of it. My wife and I decided we were not annuals kinds of gardeners. So, we focussed on perennials and that has become the central theme of all of our plantings. In Lexington, Kentucky we are in either Zone 6 or Zone 5a depending on the map you use. Our hardiness zone makes lots of perennials viable for us but there are some challenges we've had to come to terms with. Since Lexington has so many trees, full-sun locations are not in great abundance. We've taken advantage of every sunny spot we could scrounge up. Our garden is situated on the Northwest side of the house so, much of the yard gets the shadow of the house until noon. Part-sun and shady plants are a big part of our plans each year. I've searched high and low for plants that will take some shade and those that love it. An unforeseen consequence of the privacy fence is that air circulation in the yard can be hindered on the hot, humid mid-summer days and make it feel hotter in the corners. My garden phlox in the East corner are the best indicators of how hot it's getting. (I like to think of them like canaries in a mine.) When they start to droop and sulk, I know I'll have to start watering soon if no rain materializes.

I have to admit last year was a huge learning year for my wife and I (especially me) and we managed to lose only a few plants when things started up this Spring. I read somewhere that you should expect to lose 5% of first year plantings for various reasons... I guess we did OK. Early this Spring when I started perennial shopping, I got fed up with the process of buying plants and fussing around the in the back yard moving pots from place to place for a week or more trying to find the right spot for them. To stop what my wife calls the insanity, I needed to get organized and get a sense of what I need and can use.

I recommend Lee Schneller's book, The Ever-Blooming Flower Garden:

Using Lee's system, I've managed to get a grasp on my garden and learn to be more focussed when shopping for plants. My goal is to have something colorful happening in the garden from March until October. I'm getting close. As we move into midsummer, a lot of the work from last year is paying off:

You can see the midsummer colors kicking in as the early summer blooms fade. Mixed in are the late summer bloomers getting ready. Some of the plants shown here are from last year (Asiatic Lilies, May Night Salvia, Clara Curtis Chrysanthemum, Artemisia Silver Mound) and the year before (Yarrow, Lavender, Orange Day Lilies.) Some new additions from this Spring: Raspberry Wine Bee Balm, Mt. St. Helens Coral Bells, Gaura, and in the distance a gorgeous dark blue Delphinium. The Tiki Torch Coneflower in the foreground was rescued from a very over-crowded corner. I had a curious Robin checking me out while I weeded as well.

The new project going on right now is a patio from which I can sit and admire all my digging, watering, weeding and planting... If you have the time and can dig a hole, this is an awesome do-it-yourself project. I was quoted over $4,000 to do this work by a pro. A little patience, a lot of digging, three trips to get gravel and sand ($25 and $50 a load, respectively) and however many pavers I need puts me at about 75% savings. Yes it's hard work, but I'm sure to enjoy it all the more...

This picture was taken two days ago before we started on the gravel. We'll finish the sand layer tonight and be setting pavers before the lightning bugs start. I'll post at least a finished view of the project. The next post, however, will most likely be about the plan we developed for the landscaping and the way we picked plants this year.

Circumstantial Changes

Over the first few years in the house I made some improvements that began to change some of the features in the yard. The first big change to the yard was the relocation of the condensing unit for the air-conditioning that sat in the corner of the yard outside the kitchen. I added a wood fence around the yard and a deck behind the kitchen at the back door.

The new deck before the stain was put on.

The freshly enclosed back yard with the unruly clump of Orange Day Lilies in the back and overgrown Forsythia to the left.

Once those elements were in place I was able to start defining the layout of the planting beds. As an architect, I've been frustrated that the layout of the house hasn't been inviting to fun curves so I decided to let the garden be the fun area and embraced curviness when laying out the planting beds. The best technique I found for doing this was to drape the garden hose around the yard and drag it into a pleasing shape. Once I had it where I wanted it, I used surveyor's chalk to mark the line. Pulling that sod out was a major chore! The results were better than I expected...

A composite photo of the back yard. As far as plants go, we had no idea what we were doing at that time. We had gone to Lowes and picked whatever looked fun. The bulk of our work was in cutting sod and laying the walkways and brick borders. We salvaged the bricks from a walkway that was covered by the new deck. The pavers are just 16" square concrete pavers. Once the bricks were finished and the mulch was spread, we finally had something to start working with...

Introductions...

OK, I am NOT an experienced gardener but I AM a fast learner. My background is in architecture and other more "controlled" fine arts. Last year, I began making attempts to take control of my yard and transform it into something more exciting than a square of grass behind the house. While I have dabbled in landscaping at several points in my youth (mostly as hired muscle) I haven't really attempted to understand the subtle art of gardening before. As with many of my hobbies, I inherited the seed from someone else. In the case of my garden, it was an unruly patch of Orange Day Lillies in the back and a solitary and very sad looking rose bush that had been run over with a lawn mower prior to my purchase of the house in 2004. This blog is intended to be my way of documenting and sharing the story of two normal people with a garden.

Let me introduce you to the yard...

This was the front of the house the day after Thanksgiving 2004 when I decided to buy it.

The original back yard.

The side yard between us and the neighbors' house.

Well, that's the way I got it. Not a lot going on. I'll be trying to bring this project up to speed quickly this week so I can get to what's going on now. But that's the introduction for now...