I’ve been very aware of the passing of time lately. On Saturday we hosted my daughter’s Sweet 16 birthday party, and I’ve been dealing with the shock that we’re here already. How is she already sixteen?? For one of her gifts, I needed to go back and find some photos from when she was younger, and in the process, I came across some photos and videos of our yard from the fall of 2020, when we were just starting to plan a garden facelift. On one hand, fall of 2020 and all of those covid-era yard projects don’t seem that long ago. But on the other, I can hardly remember our yard without the verdant and useful little area that we call our “chicken garden” (because we can let the chickens roam around in there and stay enclosed). It’s where I drink my coffee in the morning, and Dave and I have lunch out there when the weather is nice (which is usually). I’ll sit at the table and sketch some afternoons, and one of my favorite indulgences is to lounge in the hammock and read in the early evening. So it was a surprise to look back and see how barren our yard was just a few years ago. Granted it was early fall and not spring, so it’s especially dry, but the difference is stark.
In one of the videos I found, I dictated our plans, and I guess I had intended to create a blog post series chronicling our progress. I never did that, but figured it’s not too late – especially since we’re still not really done (but, is a garden ever really done?). We are still planning to rebuild the deck in the corner of the yard eventually (though we at least removed the white plastic siding), and I’ve already moved some of the plantings a couple times. We have a pesky gopher who has also removed some of the plantings, but I found some wire planting cages to use for the replacements, so hopefully they will deter him from his favorites (dahlias and echinacea, especially). While having my coffee the other morning I was inspired to do a follow-up video, so you can see the difference.
Most of the garden has been planted with drought-tolerant plants, many of which can be used for teas or minor medical aides. There are two types of sideritis, or Greek tea, which I’ve been drying and using regularly, as well as anise hyssop, calendula, yarrow, flax, feverfew, mugwort, lavender, rosemary, rose, sages and fig. Dave and I have been making custom mixes of bedtime tea using some of these, along with turmeric, ginger, mints, lemon balm and chamomile. It makes for a beautiful and productive use of the space, and also uses much less water than grass does (well, if you intend to keep the grass green, anyway…) This area is also home to our orange tree, a potted fig and olive and a new peach tree (our old one finally gave up last year)
Here are those before and after videos, and some photos to give you an idea of the space. As you can see, it’s a big change! We sure do put it to good use now.
BEFORE
AFTER
We started by removing the grass and digging down about 10 inches, and filling the area with gravel, landscape cloth and then decomposed granite. It took lots of tamping to get the granite properly compressed and even. The dirt that we removed from the center was mostly used to build up the beds, which we lined with rocks that were formerly used to enclose our garden beds (that’s another post!) Then we dug post holes and erected the fence and trellis posts. Finally, we built the gates and used deer fencing, as we wanted something fairly light and unobtrusive – and all it really needs to hold in are chickens.
One of my favorite things about the new garden is it breaks up the space of the yard nicely. When our daughter was littler, the open space was nice for playing and setting up activities, but at this point its really nice to have separate areas of interest, and living areas, really, since we spend so much of our time out there. The gates are useful, but they also offer little portals into the different spaces, and when the trellis is covered with blooming roses it feels pretty magical.
