Waste Not, Want Not ... Recycling in the Garden

One of my mother's popular sayings from my childhood, "Waste Not, Want Not", came back to me a recently as we were left with a circle of landscape stones around a pile of sawdust where our tree used to be.

I had been unhappy with the way our island bed was looking this summer. It was surrounded by a single course of landscape stone and I was forever having to pull up the St. Augustine that was poking up between the stones that the edger couldn't get to.  In addition, because we had originally laid the stones directly on the grass when creating the bed using a sort of modified "lasagna" method, as the grass underneath had died off, so the stones had sunk.

Evenutally, the stones almost seemed buried in the grass, and didn't present the nice edging that I envisioned for the bed.

So a couple of weeks ago, as I cast a disapproving eye over the mess the back garden had become, somewhere in the gloomy recesses of my mind, a lightbulb went on and I had an idea.
Why not recycle those stones and use them to start adding a second course of stone on to the island bed?

So that's what I did.  I'm thrilled with the result.  Even though it's not finished (need to make a trip or two to Lowe's to pick up more stones) it just makes the bed look complete.  I'm still dealing with bermuda grass coming up all over, but at least the St. Augustine isn't sticking up between all the stones like it was before.  Also, even when the lawn needs mowing, you can still see the stone border, instead of it being buried in the grass.

I keep finding myself walking around it, looking at it from all angles and admiring my work, lol.

 

Why I didn't think of making it two rows high in the first place, I have no idea. Now I just need to get more landscape stones to finish it off. 

I love it when my "bright ideas" work out right :-)

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Earth Day in Jayne's Country Garden

In honor of Earth Day 2012, Eric and I planted a Page Mandarin Orange tree.  Well, okay, let me correct myself here.  Eric and I picked it out, drawn to it by nothing more scientific than the wonderful aroma of the blossoms. Eric did the actual digging and planting by himself. 

He's getting to be quite the professional at planting trees, having planted three in our garden now - the Sam Houston Peach, the Page Mandarin and the River Birch. 

Another little project we've been working on in our on-going efforts to hide and/or disguise the ugly wall at the back of the garden is a trellis, on which will grow a native honeysuckle 'Major Wheeler' - Lonicera sempervirens 'Major Wheeler'.   Since the area in which we want it to grow is thick with roots, we elected to raise up a small portion, using the same landscape bricks we have used in our other beds.                           

Also planted in that section is a Cleyera, which I originally planted in a little raise berm when trying an experiment in this same area in 2010 and a new Hamelia patens which I just planted after we had put the landscape bricks down and back-filled with organic garden soil.

Hopefully, when the honeysuckle gets here it will eventually hide the not-too-pretty pressure-treated 2x4's we used to support the trellis.

Further along the wall, I noticed the first blooms on the Rose of Sharon.  This is the same plant I brought with me as a small twig from my old house four years ago. I'm very happy that it has taken so well to it's current location.  Others I brought over and planted in other locations in the garden haven't done nearly as well.

In the new island bed, the Marguerite daisy is blooming beautifully and is attracted all sorts of winged visitors, including the little one in this photo.  I'm not sure what he is, but he certainly was enjoying the nectar in these blooms yesterday.

I discovered yesterday that the corner of the garden between the island bed and the small trellis hiding the utility boxes is a nice place to sit out in the late afternoon. There's shade offered by the pine tree and also the Vitex tree and it offers a different view of the garden to what we normally see from the patio.

Well that's it from me -- the outdoors is calling.

Happy Earth Day everyone!

Earth Day 2012

The Canopy Project

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Spring has Sprung!

I think I probably do a post with that title around this time every year! Even though I've spent over half my life here in Texas, it still excites me when I see the gardens coming back to life so much earlier than they did as I was growing up in England.


But looking around the gardens this week,  there's quite a bit going on (although admittedly, not nearly as much blooming as I've seen on the blogs of more experienced and organized gardeners than I).

In the front border, the Gazania or Treasure Flower has been blooming all winter.  The flowers were actually closed for much of the winter, but I learned they do that in damp and dull weather to protect the pollen.  The day I was out taking photos was dry and warm and the Gazania blooms were wide open.

In the back garden, I was surprised to see the Homestead Verbena blooming already.  This particular plant did nothing last year, but suddenly it's taking off this year.

The Achillea behind it made it safely through winter too, I hope I see some blooms on it this year.


I had mentioned before that my husband Eric and I were thinking of building a small vegetable garden. I'm happy to report that Eric took the reins on this one, and after a couple of weeks of hard work on his part, we now have a small veggie patch waiting to be planted.

The first job was to remove the grass around the outline of the bed, so that a concrete foundation for the brick border could be laid.  I think Eric gained a new respect for the tenacity of St. Augustine during this process.  He was considering how to employ a small thermo-nuclear device to shift it.

Then he had to build a wooden form for the concrete foundation...

He used some of the bricks that were leftover when the house was built, that had been taking up a corner of the garage.  Then he added a cap row to finish it off...


Once the borders were built, we used brown paper and newspaper to cover the grass inside and then made a trip to Lowe's for some bags of soil -- Scott's Miracle Gro Organic Choice in this instance...

We filled it up and Tada!!!  A small veggie bed ready for planting...

It measures 4 ft x 8 ft and is pretty shallow, only about 8 inches deep but we think it will work for us. 


Now we have to decide what we want to plant in it.
 

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.