Update on spiral garden

I was just on Gardener's Anonymous' Blog and saw the update of her spiral garden which inspired me to update you on my spiral garden. It's exploded into life this year and as of yet has not heard of my plots to rearrange and expand it.

Welcome to the main path:



Street side:



House side:



Sorry, I don't have any pictures of the centre of the spiral but I've changed it around, moving my delphiniums to the front and replacing them with an dark leafed, hardy abelia. Anyhow, it's in for more changing in the coming months and years. The spiral itself is most visible in the spring and fall when most of the herbaceous material has died down. My intention was to have ungulating layers of vegetation so that you play peek-a-boo as you are walking through it until you get to the centre where there is a stone bench for sitting.

Links:

Small spiral garden
Scroll down for a spiral rowed veggie patch

Garden gold, red, orange, brown...

Leaf Mulch

I decided this year that I would make leaf mulch. Normally, I put all my leaves in a pile to make leaf mould which is a great soil conditioner, and a nice mulch. However, it takes at least one year, if not more to make leaf mould.


Front spiral garden

It is a very nice organic method, little energy use (mostly just yours as you rack them into the recepticle or pile), little waste. As most of us are plagued by the LAWN, we feel the need to remove most of the leaf litter to maintain the falsehood of a mowed meadow instead of a forest clearing. Psst - you can mulch leaves onto the lawn but I don't know to what quantity. I use this fact as an excuse for not removing every last leaf. Anyhoo -

There is another way of using your leaves as mulch - the impatient way.


Instructive Instructions

Step 1: Use lawn mower to bag up the last cutting of grass and leaves.
Step 2: Dump bagged or racked leaves onto your driveway
Step 3: Run over leaves with a lawnmower until they shredded into small pieces
Step 4: Apply a thin layer to perennial beds as mulch
Step 5: Use as insulation around tender plants
Step 6: Smile at the odd looks of neighbours.


A Conversation with Neighbours

I didn't have enough leaves for all my gardens so I got some off my neighbours. They were bemused? confused?

Me: Hey there. Saw you raking like fiends yesterday.

Innocent Neighbour: We thought of tossing them over the bushes into the neighbour's yards but figured it would be better to bag them.

Me: Funny you should say that because I could use some leaves.

Innocent Neighbour: Really?

Me: Yeah, I'm making leaf mulch. (very important that you explain that aren't just leaving whole leaves on the beds to blow back into their yards). I am grinding them very small so they won't blow around as much.

Innocent Neighbour: Well we have a lot of leaves.

Me: Great.

Innocent Neighbour: I think there are 15 bags.

Me: I'm sure I could use it.

Innocent Neighbour: 15 bags.

Me: Super. When can I get them.

Innocent Neighbour: I'll open the garage

--Meanwhile, Innocent Neighbour's wife, whom we will call Unbelieving Neighbour came out. --

Unbelieving Neighbour: No, she doesn't.

Innocent Neighbour: I'm not kidding.

Me: No, really I want the leavs.

Unbelieving Neighbour: There are 15 bags!

Me: That should just be enough.

And now my beds are mulched.

Links

Info on leaf mulch
Oak versus maple leaves and dandelion populations?
Making partly decomposed leaf mulch
More on leaf mulch - whole or shredded
Urban Leaf uses

Life on the ant hill - garden tour

Center of my front spiral garden.

My front garden is a 30 by 20 foot spiral garden. It has this shape not because of some sort of mysterical reason, or because I was feeling artistic the day I planned it. Rather, it was the most efficient way of putting pathes around my dwarf fruit trees. However, now that it is set up, I do find something mystical about it. It is peaceful to slowly walk to the centre, pausing now and then to weed or watch the progress of a flower. And though the bench in the centre is the perfect height for a child (we will be raising it but the centre stone is 100lbs so I will not be doing so - again - by myself), it is still pleasant to pause for a moment, surrounded by growing things.


Spiral garden in mid-June

This is its first year completed though the design and some plants were laid in place last year. As the garden matures things will have to be moved around or replaced. Just like any living ecosystem, it will be in constant change. It is also a potager so some space is dedicated to temporary planting of vegetables though I may add more permanent eats next year such as a bed of chicory, and self seeded salsify.


Ground Cherries, Helenium, and fading daffodiles.

Right now, along with 2 dwarf apples, a semi-dwarf plum, rhubarb, a hedge of gooseberry, current, and rugosa, there is also ground cherry, a sad looking eggplant, tomatillo, pepper, basil, dill, shallots and garlic.


Ninebark behind a rosa rugosa which gives great rose hips.

These are mixed with the usual rioteous display of gifted,


Plant cycle gifted sebum - thanks Val!


First plant cycle event I attended, gifted bellflower

bought


Regular old cranesbill

and found plants.


Infamously beautiful lawn weed from my lawn

I look forward to watching its ever changing face throughout the glorious snowless season!

Another attack on the yawn... I mean lawn

If you have been reading my posts about lawn care, you might note that it is a bit harsh. In other words, I like to rip it out, smother it, or overwhelm it with other more interesting plants.

Here is another master plan in action:

New beds along driveway and path

Lawn swath soon to be gravel path

Front Spiral Garden

Are you using your imagination? Can you see it without the magic of stitch fixing software? Beside the spiral garden (far right), will be a gravel and patio stone path, which is now framed with gardens. I am getting some looks from passerbys but very few questions.

They are all afraid of the lawn destroyer!

Garden Planning

'Tis the season to be planning, fa-la-la-la...'



This fall I planted a whole bunch of bulbs, which are hopefully sleeping safely under the snow at the moment. They went in my spiral garden at the front which is a mixed perrenial bed containing dwarf/semi-dwarf fruit trees, self seeders, and the occasional vegetable - garlic was amoung the bulbs planted.

Anyhow, I notice how us gardeners acknowlege how our efforts don't always produce what we had dreamed. As this is the dreaming month, I thought I would introduce you to one of my dreams.

Last spring, I decided that I wanted a mini orchard with fruit trees and berry bushes. I wanted it in my organic front lawn: read, mixed low growing weeds that if kept mowed looks lawn-like. My husband hates the 'lawn' so agreed to it. I began to draw, and draw and draw. Eventually, I settled on a spiral path running around 2 apple trees, one self pollinating plum 'Montreal Plum', and a hedge containing a gooseberry, red current, and a rugosa rose.

Then I got out my spoons and string and mapped out the area. Neighbours made wisecracks about spoon harvests.

I planted the trees*:



My Italian Neighbour made sure that I spaced them far enough apart.

I started canvasing for cheap stone. My handyman neighbour suggested blasting sights. I think my eyes must have looked like firecrackers had gone off in them. Free stone! Free. Absolutely free! I went to the Quebec Side and loaded my Cavalier (yes the standard non pickup truck model car) with rock. Then I went back 3 or 4 more times. The last time to get the piece-de-resistance, a 100lb rectangular slab that would make a perfect bench for the centre of the spiral. Now, if you were to see me, you would know that no one has mistaken me for the Incredible Hulk or any of his kin so this thing was HEAVY. But I lifted it somehow and stumbled about a city block to my car. I rested it on the curb to think. Could I lift it high enough not to drop it on my foot or the car? Thankfully a burly frenchman who had also been raiding the site came over and gave me a hand.

Next step, I laid the stone in the pattern I wanted on the ground. A stone spiral on grass got some funny looks. I don't think anyone yet had my vision for the thing. Finally the soil and mulch was delivered. Some furious digging later, this was the result. Actually this picture is taken in the fall after most of the plants that are currently in it have died back.



It still needs the path running to the front of the yard, but that will be done next year.

I like it. I am happy. It is not exactly what I had dreamed but like any plan, its realization is more beautiful partly because of the triumph of completion (or nearly) and partly because of the process.

So dream, plan. It'll be great, or at the very least, a learning experience.

I'll keep you updated on whether the squirrels foil my clever chicken wire contraptions and eat all the bulbs that should come up in the spring.

* The two dwarf apples have my daughter's placentas underneath. The Montreal plum is self fertile but I have another to be trained as a fan in the backyard to act as additional fertilization. There is also a small cotoneaster shrub in the middle. This is an evolving garden so that some perrenials will eventually have to be moved as they are shaded out by the growing fruit trees. Most are part-shade tolerant.