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.

Easy Garden Border

There's an area off to the left (west) of the garden that's been bugging me.  We have two jasmines (one scented and one mysteriously scentless) and mowing/edging around them is a pain.  I'm always worried I will get too close with the edger and decapitate one of the jasmines. 

The area called for an expansion of the border along the side of the garden.

However, I'm not one for hard labor.  Especially not in Houston... in summer.... so this past weekend, I you might be surprised to hear that I spent part of the Labor Day weekend lugging large rocks around the garden and laying them artfully in the shape of a new border.

Actually it wasn't that bad.  The weather was a smidgeon coolor and less humid (it's a relative thing...)  And I only carried one stone at a time from my car on the driveway, round to the back fence and placed the stone on the ground.

Where I saved myself from hard labor was in that fact that I didn't do any digging at all. Both jasmines are already planted so I laid out newspaper several sheets thick, watered it down ...

... and then covered it with mulch...

Rinse and repeat...

I love the finished effect as you walk up the side of the house to the back garden. And next year, when the grass has all died off under the paper and mulch I'll be able to do more planting in the bed.
 

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