I recently
moved across town into a smaller,
newer house with gravel “landscaping” from a 17 year old garden and large trees, many that I grew from seedlings.
Here is what I left at my old house:
This is what I moved into, in a ten-year-old subdivision:
I live in what is called the high desert west. That's the area that is west of
the Colorado Rockies and stretches out across much of Utah, Nevada, and parts
of Idaho and New Mexico. This is the sagebrush country that you see in
commercials with cowboys.
This area adds some complications to my gardening
situation – intense sun and limited moisture, soils that are salty and full of
clay. It is an area where we get 6 to 10 inches of moisture - in a good year.
So plants have to survive in exceedingly intense sun, with very little natural
moisture, and low humidity, which all cause big daily temperature fluctuations
between high noon and night time.
I knew I had to have a bit of a plan, maybe not
every detail, but a general sequence, because I knew if I
rushed through getting a yard set up, I would be fighting the results for the
rest of my days.
Into that plan comes my landscaping budget, which of
course, I wanted to be as small as possible. Many people put an actual amount
on how much to spend. All I knew was that I would be spending most of my money
on the early prep of my new yard and I would have to grit my teeth, write the
check and have the patience to wait until I could afford the next step.
The first thing would be get rid of the gravel, then
add organic matter, like compost, to the soil. Also, I was going to treat
myself to a sprinkler system. I have never lived in a house where I didn’t have
to drag hoses, an ordeal I'm eager to eliminate from regular garden upkeep.
While these early stages were happening, I could
watch how the beating sun changed over the summer so I could better plan how to
design my landscape. Now I am no garden designer – I work on the chaos-in-the-garden
theory. I do cluster higher water plants together and keep my lower water plants
in different areas, but beyond that I use only 2 ‘rules’ – use curving lines
and plant in groups of odd numbers. This means planting the same plant in
threes or fives. There is supposed to be something soothing about using these
odd-numbered groupings and it works for me.
I now live in a Home Owners Association (HOA)
neighborhood where the front yard design had to meet certain standards set up
by the HOA design committee. That would restrict what I could plant. But I want my backyard to be the same sort of
beautiful chaos that I had left behind at the old house. I want all sorts of perennials
that flower in all different seasons along the entire length of the garden.
For me, the kitchen view of my new, much smaller, backyard is the most important visual aspect of the back garden. I will plant some small trees and shrubs
right along the fence, to soften its straight line. I would like a small veggie garden in front
of my shed and the shed area to be screened by an inexpensive trellis, maybe
covered with annual vines.
So this is what I'm starting with, and the
knowledge that my kind of garden does not spring up overnight. It will be a
long, fun process. As my gardening friends and I agree, gardening can be a never-ending
project. For us this is a good thing.
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