My Garden 2003

This was the way my garden looked in 2003.

If you'd like to see how it looked in the summer of 2006, go here. Hint: it changed a lot.

If you want to see the daily happenings in my garden, have a look at my garden blog.

In The Beginning...
When we moved to this property, the yard was just grass surrounded by chain link fence, with one shrub (a forsythia). The back yard is small and slopes down to a storm sewer in one corner. The drainage there was poor at best and there always seemed to be a few inches of water sitting there.

Each summer I'd go on local garden tours and long for my own little piece of paradise. Eventually I realized our move to this house wasn't as temporary as we first hoped, and I decided to start a garden right here, in the dense clay soil. That was 1998. A draught 3 years later wiped out a lot of my perennials, so I had to start over from there. I created raised beds in the bog area and the rain water now flows around the moats down to the storm sewer, solving the drainage problem.

The soil is still heavy clay and needs constant attention. If I leave it as is, only the weeds seem the happiest. The perennials act like their feet are bound.

The Front Garden
The Angel Fountain
This is the patch of garden beside my front steps. The option of digging a
deep garden bed was out of the question because the ground is filled with debris (old chunks of concrete and gravel) and there are some underground conduits. So instead I decided to take my rock fetish to the limit and build a stone fountain.

I used two rubber tubs, one placed higher than the other, and slightly overlapping. I used old metal stove racks to place across the tubs and hold the rocks. There is a recirculating pump in the lower tub with a hose running the water back to the top tub (which then overflows into the lower tub, and round and round it goes). My daughter (then age 4) had the idea to put a little angel statue at the top holding the water hose which was just tacky enough to appeal to me. The sound of the waterfall is very pleasing, though late at night stray dogs and wild animals do come by for drinks.

The pump was $30 US on eBay. The tubs were $12 CAD. The rocks were free with muscle power. The rock garden plants are doing nicely there.

Front Garden in Early Spring
I planted bulbs in this front garden in 2002 hoping for continuous bloom from April to August.
(Update in 2004: I only seem to have blooms during the Spring, not through to August as the bulb company's catalogue promised. Update in 2005: I still haven't found the winning combination of plants for the front that looks great, provides continuous bloom, curb appeal, and can withstand the extreme heat and dry conditions (southern exposure). Stay tuned.)The rest of the front yard is grass (bor-ing! but no choice due to the underground cables and conduits) so let's go to the side garden.

The Garden Gate
The vine you see growing around the archway was actually a weed I pulled out of my driveway. It was growing between two bricks. When I yanked it out, it was only about a foot long and I discovered it had very long roots. I pulled so hard that when it finally did release, I went flying backwards down the driveway. Never a dull moment.... I planted it beside the gate post, and it's happily making its way across the archway and along the top of the fence.

Ok, let's go in.

Mirror Mirror on the Fence
This picture is kind of blurry but you can see the mirror on the fence. It's actually an old mirrored shower door, hung on its side. I've added a few more since this picture was taken. These bathroom mirrors work great because they're made for exposure to water. And best of all, they allow me to see the garden from my kitchen window at the side of the house.

[See more about using mirrors in the garden here.]
The blue globe (hanging by the end of the mirror) is an old light fixture covered in flat-bottomed marbles. I love how it looks like a giant blueberry.

Cats and Birds
I have a couple of bird feeders and a bird bath above the fence mirror. Because the birdseed inevitably ends up in the ground below (and sprouts into all kinds of unusual plants), I just go with the flow and plant a lot of sunflowers there.

There's a very timid black cat (a.k.a. Fraidy Cat) in the neighborhood who likes to take his naps laying on top of the fence in the sunshine next to the bird feeder. I've seen the birds eat and bathe right beside him without him even waking up!This is the side garden during its peak in July/August.

Nature Gives and Nature Takes
A few summers ago we had a terrible draught through the month of August. Because I had not done much to amend the clay soil, most of my plants died (except the Prarrie Mallow which is the cockroach of garden plants: definitely draught-hardy but far too invasive so I've since removed it). Since then I have added loads of triple mix and added new plants. There's still quite a lot of room to add more -- I like them really packed in to keep the weeding to a minimum. This top picture shows the garden in early Spring after that fateful summer. It's hard to see in the picture but the little wooden gate was a trash find that I used to obscure the view of the air conditioner.

Last summer I started the cedar fence to make the brick wall look more attractive. I intentionally placed it away from the wall to leave room for the hollyhocks to go nuts back there. I got the cedar trees from someone's garbage (they were from a very old hedge). I have a bunch more I hope to add to it this year to thicken up the fence.




Clematis
You say clematis, I say clematis.... There was one square foot of soil where I could dig, against the house wall, just as you come in through the gate. I put a clematis there. It turned out to be two very different vines that must have become good friends at the greenhouse (hence the pink and purple blooms intertwined).

Berry Good
This is the garden beside the back deck. There are a few delphiniums and phlox, but it's mainly dedicated to the raspberries. About 6 years ago a friend gave me one raspberry stalk to plant. I hadn't done any gardening and didn't really know where to put it. So I stuck it in the ground on the other side of the deck where it's quite shady. Within a year that one plant had spread around the deck and come up on the other side (that you see here), where it's a little bit sunnier. Shoots started coming up everywhere and I now get about 10-20 pints of raspberries each year during July and August. Heavenly.



Just across from the raspberries is the strawberry patch. It too started from one plant about 3 years ago. That one plant spread into many and they produce big, outrageously sweet berries. I'm tempted to let the patch spread over another few feet to increase the harvest.

Next I want to try growing some blueberries. My youngest daughter grows a small veggie garden each year as well though we buy most of our produce at the local Farmer's Market.

Bogden Nash a.k.a. Swampy Corner resides at the far end of the strawberry patch. There's a storm sewer there and all the neighboring yards slant toward this storm sewer. For years my backyard sat in a few inches of water back there because the soil around the sewer would erode and the excess water couldn't drain properly. I planted native lily plants and have just left them to do their thang. [2005 Update: The lilies grow about 8 feet high and have completely filled in the boggy corner.]



These delphiniums are a beautiful periwinkle blue with purple shimmers. They grow about 6-8 feet high and the stalks are strong enough to hold masses of blooms.



After numerous experiments, I ended up creating raised beds at the back. I used rocks and cast-off bricks to hold the beds in place. You can see the top edge of them at the bottom of this picture. Each year the snow knocks them down and each Spring I stack them up again....

Now when it rains, the water flows around the beds and down toward the storm sewer. I will still have to continually correct the grade to ensure good flow, but it's better than having plain soggy sod like I used to.



Daisy Corner
The vine in the corner on the fence is a Virginia Creeper that was terribly unhappy in another part of the garden. It spread like the dickens its first summer in this location. This year I hope to get a silver lace vine to grow across the back fence as well.

I've just started planting the bed in the foreground (starting with daisies).

Livingroom View
Our livingroom window faces the backyard. This picture was taken from just below the window. I love this part of the garden because it went from being an eyesore to one of my favourite places (not easy to do with such an awkward, cramped space).

Our deck is up on the right, and of course my trusty fence is to the left. The fence serves several purposes including blocking out some of the very intense wind we get here and discourages the lazier bunny rabbits from digging their way into the yard for a snack. The forsythia bush that you see on the right above the lawn chair was here when we moved in. I begrudged the placement of that bush for years but now I've come to love it because it's quite tall (15 feet) and it blocks my nosey neighbors' (Hi, Neighbor!) view of our yard when the leaves are full.

One of my favourite garden chandeliers is hanging from the arch you see here and I love how the stones look on the curves of the garden bed beyond it. This year I plan to remove the grass you see in the foreground and fill that area with ferns and hostas. It's the very shady area where the raspberry was started. It also houses my mighty composter and the garden hose.


A Bird's Eye View of the Back

Here's a 2005 autumn view of the yard from above.

I hope you enjoyed your tour. We'll see if I manage an update next summer. (And yes, I'll have larger pictures next time.) It's all quite different now....Tour my garden in 2006 here.

Related Entries: There's a complete listing of my virtual garden tours here I keep track of garden weirdness here See my garden art/junk. Do you have a picture to add to the Garden Shed Hall of Fame? Mirrors in the garden? Don't they break? The 2006 Blooming Cycle - my attempt to record blooming times.