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torquillI've thrown myself into renovating ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eastbaygreg's front yard, which was full of dead grass (turned to weak weeds) for years. It's a really difficult gardening spot: clay mixed with sandstone, the soil is actually subsoil with so little nutrient value that even the weeds never got very far; it has full northwest exposure, making it blazing hot in summer; during the warmest five months out of the year there are constant, gusting winds up to 30mph or more straight across the yard, desiccating everything; and there's not much money to pay for irrigation water or drip.
So we have hot, sunny, unbelievably dry, windy, and nutrient-poor. Once I set the back of my mind loose on that one for a while, you know what I thought of? That's right: deserts. Like parts of Arizona and New Mexico. Which are about as far from my comfort zone of irrigated agriculture as you can get. I hate cactus, and I'm not too fond of most succulents.
Despite that, I've been surprising myself by really getting into this design. I threw out most proper cactus (too much effort turning clay into rocky sand, and many of them are quite picky about drainage). Prickly pear is, well, prickly. So I focused on aloe, agave, and yucca. A trip to the Ruth Bancroft Garden showed me that there really is an incredible variety just within those three groups... they thrive in poor soils, and most tolerate clay so long as it drains well. They're also not too unpleasant to handle or brush up against, beyond some sharp leaf tips and the occasional toothiness -- not at all like spines and needles.
Summer is the time to plant these, so I figured I should get a move on. I mapped out a series of low mounds, which will add visual appeal, help with drainage still further, and allow me to amend the hills with wood chips and pumice. I put a dry "creekbed" down the middle to divide the yard roughly in half, help with runoff, and give me some plausible variability in plant choices. Every time I dig up my garden beds at home (every year) I pull out at least a six-gallon bucketful of river rock, so I have a good pile with which to line the creek. The upper part, near the house, will host plants which are lush and green, and look like they love water (though they don't actually need it): irises, an established glossy-leaf privet bush, Mexican plume grass, oregano, and creeping thyme. As the creek descends the slope already present in the yard, the plants will become more and more desert-like.
The main mulch will be wood chips, which weather to a pleasant pale-neutral backdrop (I'll surround the pickier agaves with rock or sand around the base). I plan to line the edges of the creek with rock fines or coarse sand, to simulate a "shore"; in and around that I will bury spring-blooming bulbs like crocus, hyacinth, and narcissus for a spring display. The aloe and yucca plants will bloom in summer, alongside rosemary, lavender, and lantana. The bushes next to the walk will be herbs, fragrant when touched, including some creeping thyme around stepping-stones formalizing the shortcut to the driveway.
All of these plants should survive very hot, dry weather once established. The succulents will be put in during the heat of summer (the clay will help me with moisture levels while they root), and I'll plant the herbs and natives in the fall. With luck, by next summer I'll only need to keep an eye on things and water once every few weeks; within three years, it'll all be on its own. Some plants may be a little unhappy about drought, but they'll live, and that's what's important. I expect to have to replace four or five herbaceous plants during establishment.
I nicked a few pups of the biiiig agave varieties (blue and variegated) a few days ago, and now I can collect divisions of the medium and small species of aloe. Bush yuccas may cost some money, but most of the other plants are cheap or free. Wood chips are free, the creekbed stones are free, sand is cheap, and the filler dirt comes from a big pile in the back yard. I got a few free rocks, and I'll craigslist/freecycle for more (I want native sandstone or fieldstone). This whole project has cost less than $20 so far -- I bought the oregano, some thyme, more plume grass, iris, another grass, two clumping succulents, and two saffron crocus bulbs today -- and I hope it will cost less than $150 total. For an entire corner-house front yard, that's quite a small price tag. Some wrenches in the works may come in the prices of rock fines, any large rocks I need to purchase, and the cost of bush yuccas (whose globes of thin leaves are hard to replicate). The cost of the rest is pretty predictable.
It's a lot of labor, but I'm okay with that. We're not talking more than a couple of months at most, even with other stuff going on, as I'm healthy enough to run a wheelbarrow and shovel for several hours at a time. The first step (slated for tomorrow) is to rip out the junipers at the edge of the yard, which Greg has always hated, then rototill. The old sod netting may drag that out for a day or two, but not longer. I need to get wood chips on site, and I'll rake up the red lava rock on the side of the house to mix in with the soil under the agaves. Then I can get to building three or four 2' mounds.
This is fun. :)
eastbaygreg's front yard, which was full of dead grass (turned to weak weeds) for years. It's a really difficult gardening spot: clay mixed with sandstone, the soil is actually subsoil with so little nutrient value that even the weeds never got very far; it has full northwest exposure, making it blazing hot in summer; during the warmest five months out of the year there are constant, gusting winds up to 30mph or more straight across the yard, desiccating everything; and there's not much money to pay for irrigation water or drip. So we have hot, sunny, unbelievably dry, windy, and nutrient-poor. Once I set the back of my mind loose on that one for a while, you know what I thought of? That's right: deserts. Like parts of Arizona and New Mexico. Which are about as far from my comfort zone of irrigated agriculture as you can get. I hate cactus, and I'm not too fond of most succulents.
Despite that, I've been surprising myself by really getting into this design. I threw out most proper cactus (too much effort turning clay into rocky sand, and many of them are quite picky about drainage). Prickly pear is, well, prickly. So I focused on aloe, agave, and yucca. A trip to the Ruth Bancroft Garden showed me that there really is an incredible variety just within those three groups... they thrive in poor soils, and most tolerate clay so long as it drains well. They're also not too unpleasant to handle or brush up against, beyond some sharp leaf tips and the occasional toothiness -- not at all like spines and needles.
Summer is the time to plant these, so I figured I should get a move on. I mapped out a series of low mounds, which will add visual appeal, help with drainage still further, and allow me to amend the hills with wood chips and pumice. I put a dry "creekbed" down the middle to divide the yard roughly in half, help with runoff, and give me some plausible variability in plant choices. Every time I dig up my garden beds at home (every year) I pull out at least a six-gallon bucketful of river rock, so I have a good pile with which to line the creek. The upper part, near the house, will host plants which are lush and green, and look like they love water (though they don't actually need it): irises, an established glossy-leaf privet bush, Mexican plume grass, oregano, and creeping thyme. As the creek descends the slope already present in the yard, the plants will become more and more desert-like.
The main mulch will be wood chips, which weather to a pleasant pale-neutral backdrop (I'll surround the pickier agaves with rock or sand around the base). I plan to line the edges of the creek with rock fines or coarse sand, to simulate a "shore"; in and around that I will bury spring-blooming bulbs like crocus, hyacinth, and narcissus for a spring display. The aloe and yucca plants will bloom in summer, alongside rosemary, lavender, and lantana. The bushes next to the walk will be herbs, fragrant when touched, including some creeping thyme around stepping-stones formalizing the shortcut to the driveway.
All of these plants should survive very hot, dry weather once established. The succulents will be put in during the heat of summer (the clay will help me with moisture levels while they root), and I'll plant the herbs and natives in the fall. With luck, by next summer I'll only need to keep an eye on things and water once every few weeks; within three years, it'll all be on its own. Some plants may be a little unhappy about drought, but they'll live, and that's what's important. I expect to have to replace four or five herbaceous plants during establishment.
I nicked a few pups of the biiiig agave varieties (blue and variegated) a few days ago, and now I can collect divisions of the medium and small species of aloe. Bush yuccas may cost some money, but most of the other plants are cheap or free. Wood chips are free, the creekbed stones are free, sand is cheap, and the filler dirt comes from a big pile in the back yard. I got a few free rocks, and I'll craigslist/freecycle for more (I want native sandstone or fieldstone). This whole project has cost less than $20 so far -- I bought the oregano, some thyme, more plume grass, iris, another grass, two clumping succulents, and two saffron crocus bulbs today -- and I hope it will cost less than $150 total. For an entire corner-house front yard, that's quite a small price tag. Some wrenches in the works may come in the prices of rock fines, any large rocks I need to purchase, and the cost of bush yuccas (whose globes of thin leaves are hard to replicate). The cost of the rest is pretty predictable.
It's a lot of labor, but I'm okay with that. We're not talking more than a couple of months at most, even with other stuff going on, as I'm healthy enough to run a wheelbarrow and shovel for several hours at a time. The first step (slated for tomorrow) is to rip out the junipers at the edge of the yard, which Greg has always hated, then rototill. The old sod netting may drag that out for a day or two, but not longer. I need to get wood chips on site, and I'll rake up the red lava rock on the side of the house to mix in with the soil under the agaves. Then I can get to building three or four 2' mounds.
This is fun. :)
