Ambitious Plans

Meredith and I just spent some time wandering around behind the other houses in our complex. Really I was just following her around (and at times she was following me around) with no real purpose to our walk, but it made me realize something. Our yard is one of the least well-kept yards here. This isn’t really our fault. The people who lived here previously most definitely were not gardeners. It was worse when we moved in and I’ve never had any gardening experience so I think just the fact that I’ve successfully transplanted a rose bush and got some of the other bushes to bloom is a big accomplishment. But compared to the other yards ours is pretty embarrassing.

I had a few thoughts on plans for it, but they’re pretty ambitious. The biggest problem is that flowers, trees, and tools can be pretty expensive and we are on a limited budget right now. I’m going to have to keep a better eye out on Freecycle I think and do some reading about gardening on a budget. Here is my ideal though. I’m keeping in mind that Kris doesn’t like to mow and that we have a huge green area literally right out our back gate and a park four houses down, both of which are enclosed in our complex. So we don’t need a ton of yard room. Enough room for our hammock, some lawn chairs, and a little pool is probably more than enough.

This is the garden to the left as you walk out our patio door. As you can probably tell, this is the one area I’ve spent the least amount of time in so far. It actually looks better than when we moved in.  I’ve weeded it a little bit and cleared out some of the worst. We want to get rid of the two cement blocks that are in it, though I think we’ll need a crowbar or something equally strong to get them out. I can’t decide what to do with the bush and the rhubarb. The bush bloomed for a couple of weeks, and then has been looking like it does now the rest of the summer. I’m not sure if that’s because we didn’t water it enough, or if the flowers only last that long, but if it’s because the flowers don’t last very long it’s not a very nice bush.

As for the rhubarb, Kris and I don’t really eat rhubarb, though I might be tempted to make pies or something with it if I knew when to harvest it. I wonder if rhubarb can be transplanted? I’d love to move it to where I want to put our vegetable garden. The dog likes to peek through the fence here into the neighbour’s yard and bark at their cats, so I’d love to put some plants up to block it a bit and make it a little more private. It doesn’t get a lot of sun here though. Or maybe this would be a good spot for a dog house. We want to take out the cement steps that make up the walkway to the shed right now, and make a real stone walkway that won’t need to be mowed or weeded.

This area I have kept weeded most of the summer, and I did plant some seeds late in July, but obviously not many of them have actually come up. The dog likes to lie and dig here though, so that’s probably why. We want to build her a dog house with no floor (since she likes to lie in dirt) and I was thinking the corner here might be a good spot for it since this is the shadiest spot in our yard, except I’d worry she would jump on top of it and get over the fence. Another thought I had for it was to expand the garden part all the way to the gate and put in some butterfly/hummingbird flowers (if there are any that do well in shade), as well as a hummingbird feeder. I haven’t seen any hummingbirds here though, and only a few butterflies, so I don’t know if it’s worth it. If they don’t come around here already, how would they know to come here?  Or I might put some berry bushes, raspberries and/or blueberries.  I’ve always read to keep food plants away from buildings, but I wonder if that’s true for a shed that has no pipes or electricity running underground to it?  I think they say that because of the chance of lead and stuff leeching into the soil.

This back corner is where I would like my vegetable garden to be.  It gets part sun and part shade, and is furthest from the house.  I want to make it a lot bigger than it is now, though I’m not sure if I can make it big enough to actually grow most of our own veggies in the summer without taking away too much from the rest of the yard.  I would love some corn, a couple of pumpkins, peas, beans, lettuce, zucchini, cucumber, carrots… My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  I’ll probably extend the garden to the edge of the gate, and then I’d like to make it a lot deeper too but our yard is so little.  I could always have some veggies running down the side of the fence towards the house too.  I don’t know what to do with the tree. I don’t know what kind of tree it is, and it doesn’t seem to be doing very well, but I don’t know if I can dig up and kill a tree. I’d love to replace it with some sort of small fruit tree though; cherries or apples.

This is the fence on that side towards the house.  I was thinking of putting up rose bushes or some type of evergreen for privacy, but veggies might be a better use of the space.  As it gets closer to the house, it gets a lot more sun.

This area is the sunniest part of the yard. The area against the house gets sun almost all day. The part in front of the garden that is mostly dirt and clover is where I’ve been digging up dandelions. Most of our yard is dandelions and/or clover. There’s not much grass. I want to get rid of all the grass and reseed it, preferably with something other than Kentucky Blue Grass (since that’s the type I seem to be allergic too), but I don’t know how to do that cheaply.

The rose bush we transplanted (in the center) which we were sure was dying has actually been doing really well now that it’s in the sun. The little bush with the purple flowers has been doing great too, since we pulled all the weeds that were covering it up. I am trying to figure out what kind of bush it is.  I was thinking of expanding this garden to be the same depth as the porch, and planting more roses and some hummingbird and butterfly plants. 

I’m not sure what to line everything with either. We were thinking just decorative looking wood, but that sort of limits the shape of the gardens to square or rectangular. Which is fine if it’s the cheapest way to go. I’m definitely going to be looking at other options though. We also would love to cover our patio with something, maybe astro-turf. Or maybe we’ll just pressure wash it and repaint it white.

Related posts:

1. My Garden
2. Gardening
3. Garden 2009
4. Snapshot Sunday
5. Garden thoughts