I guess my space limitation is that dh wont let me garden the entire back yard! He has a beautiful pond, i tell him thats his space. We have 2 dogs so they need some lawn. We do plan on having a baby, who id imagine would like a place to play in! So i sectioned myself off a rather large area , maybe a third of the back yard for myself. He gets the pond area. I do love to walk barefoot in the grass so im not sure an entire yard takeover would be ideal.
LL, i think you are still taking great advantage of your space, even with some restictions! I think small garden spaces create a very intimate feel. And a creek sounds so charming! I love water features, especially natural ones. I think your bean teeppees are great because they are vertical and wont take up much space. In an old issue of Garden Gate they show a bean arbor made up of the mesh they use for cattle fence . It has been shaped into a giant upside down U that you can walk under. The bean vine covers it and the beans dangle down so its easy to harvest them. Maybe that is something you can try?
Another challenge i have is that we have poor drainage in some spots, like along my fenceline next to the neighbors. I tried planting roses and they did good all summer, but then fall rain came and im sure they rotted. I hope they come back so i can move them but i am not counting on it.

lilyfinch - be careful of that pond if a baby is in the plans. A friend's grandson tragically drowned when he was a toddler, in a backyard pond. I'll never think of a pond in the same way again!

LL - have you posted pictures of your garden/yard? It sounds like a very attractive place. Do you have a survey of the home grounds? It sounds like it might be useful to play around with sketching out alternatives re shaping the space/gardens on a scale drawing - I find the suvey an easy place to do that. I started out with individual garden beds but, over the years, they gradually became linked as I played around with what the 'genius loci' was telling me to do! We only have 1/4 acre but it's now all one space - i.e. I now no longer think of it as various garden beds but rather one garden that fills the whole space. How many/what kind of horses do you have? My riding days are long past now but horses still 'speak' to me...

Lilyfinch- Your backyard sounds very pretty. The roses might be alright...my soil is all clay (as is mom's) and her roses were fine last spring.

You're right, the creek is beautiful, with aspens and big shrubs growing along it. I think I might have some standard willows too, but it's hard to tell until they get bigger. We had the horses off that part of the pasture long enough for some of the shrub/trees to grow big enough, now they don't pay any attention to them. They're only along the creek in the summer and have plenty of grass.

The bean arbor sounds like a great idea.

Woodyoak- We have six horses...yes six! We tell people it's because we did NOT want seven (LOL) which is pretty much a Bill Cosby line about his kids :)

We had two for a long time, who finally had one little boy, then lost the second baby and the vet said our mare wouldn't have any more foals. Three later, we finally got "dad" gelded and now they're all pets...at least that's what they think. They're very sweet and well-behaved, but we don't make them do much, so they mostly play in the pasture and entertain the nieces and nephews when they come out to visit. Mom and Dad are both 1/2 paint and 1/2 quarterhorse (at least she is) but my mom thinks the dad is part morgan. They're both solid, as are the FOUR boys, but they all have white blazes and the mom and the three younger boys have some white markings. The youngest one looks like he has the most "paint" in his background.

When I figure out how to post pictures, I'll try to get one of them...and the creek :)

I don't have a survey, but I do make plans on graph paper. Don't get me wrong, I love where I live, but finding garden space can be a challenge. That might be a good thing, though, because I'd probably take on too much at once if I had more space!

Hi Woody, I remembered that you enjoy horses too.

I grew up around horses and a family member raised draft horses. It's been a long time since I was around horses and I really miss them. Having opportunity to have them sounds so ideal. I would LOVE to see photos of them, too. :-)

I have an even tinier space than that. It's been a challenge but I try to create more space by vertical planting or by container gardening.

We container garden - mainly because of the fact that our soil is terrible and our compost heap is great. But we also have to work around the gardening problem that most of out 15 acres is in our fenced "goatland" area and there's not a lot of goat-free space to garden.

We still were able to grow 220 tomato plants this year - most of them in this patio area behind the garage:
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We also have a lot of our front yard used for container growing:
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We end up with islands of vegetables everywhere. Sometimes we grow things in one area for part of the year and then move them later. That way we can use our summer tomato garden as my Winter Sowing area and also as a sheltered place to overwinter young tree saplings.

We are considering eventually expanding to garden cubes out in goatland - fencing small squares (10 - 15 ft. on a side) and using those for containers. We'd like to have one of those in container bamboo with a little sitting area in the middle. The goats will trim the plants closest to the fencing but it will still be a good place to propagate rootstock and it's close enough to the house we can get a hose there if we need to.

The link below is for my photos that use the keyword "buckets" so you can see more of the container growing. We've got about 500 buckets in service right now and have access to a never ending supply of used ones. Our friendly local metal scrap dealer has people leaving them there all of the time and he gives them away - which is better than him having to pay to have them processed as garbage. He's also a great source for free tires to turn into tire gardens. (Another great way to container garden but less portable than the buckets.)

Container growing is great if you have a good compost heap - and if you've got horses I'm guessing you've got a nice supply of "black gold" on hand. :)

Here is a link that might be useful: More of our bucket gardening

I'm so excited, I had to jump on and tell you all :)

My wonderful husband listened to my sad story of too small a space for my garden and said, "that's easy. Keep your little "salad garden" where it is and I'll move the horse pasture and we can move the fence back about 30'...is that going to be enough room?"

Not only will it give me plenty of room for some bigger beds for potatoes, pumpkins, bean teepees, etc. but there's no grass and it's already heavily fertilized (LOL) I'm so glad we chose a corral made of connecting metal gates, so it's not too difficult to move and we have wire electric horse fence, so we can expand the pasture when we need to. My husband doesn't garden, but he's a great guy!

Ianna- I like your ideas about vertical planting and using containers. Even with the extra space, those will still work well in the garden :)

One other thing - Our main front yard container area is in the central third of the yard. The porch area 1/3 and the roadside 1/3 are my cottage/flower gardens.

I've set up my plantings so that the first 30 feet in from the road are flowers that I have in abundance - so that if someone steals one or two blooms I'm not going to be too upset. Of course, they need to cross the ditch and get past the shrubs (including barberry) to do so.

The center 1/3 has our beans on the edge closest to the road. That way if anyone crosses 30 feet of flower bed determined to steal vegetables, the first vegetables to steal are ones you have to work to harvest in quantity.

My more special flowers are in the garden 1/3 closest to the porch. You'd have to be pretty bold and not afraid of rottweilers to steal from that garden bed.

Even though there is a lot of theft around here, I don't think anyone is going to get past all of that, follow the path past the garage, and steal our tomatoes. :)

Lynda

Lgslgs- What a great idea! I never thought of using so many containers...and you are recycling buckets and tires in the process! Yes, we have PLENTY of black gold (LOL)

220 tomato plants...that impressive! How many goats do you have? We had a couple of goats when I was young and I thought they were great. They were very smart and would follow me and my brother all over the place :)

Lavender_lass - We have 8 goats and one cow, all pets with lifelong homes here. We keep a non-breeding herd and the animals spend most of their time working as our landscaping crew. They've cleaned out heavy brush, thinned saplings and transformed our land from looking like a jungle to looking more like a park.

They are great garden helpers. Weeding is more fun when there's cute animals waiting at the fence for green snacks!

Lynda

Lynda- That's great, your goats and cow sound like my horses :)

That's why we had goats. My mom refused to spray chemicals, even back in the 70's, so the goats were her way of dealing with weeds! Anything that didn't compost was a snack for the goats.

Lgslgs, we also had two goats who helped us take an overgrown jungle and transform it into a park that would be the envy of some towns. Unfortunately our property is not fenced in and we had to give our goats away because we ran out of work for them, but they are happy in their new home with fenced pastures.

I have a similar problem as lavender lass, we have six acres and most of it is sloping toward the creek, ours turns into many streams during heavy rain, so we can't plant flowerbeds in those places. Also, dh doesn't like to mow around so many "obstacles" so my beds are around the foundation of the house but I did manage to make a giant shade bed under several trees. Our vegetable garden is on the top of the hill in the only really flat area of the property and since he is really the vegetable gardener, its ok to mow around that. lol I have lots of trees and am working on him to "let" me put in a new flower bed this year. He better, because today is the day I winter sow and I'll have lots of new plants to put out. Wish me luck!

When one has a sloping yard, a solution could also be to terrace the spots.

Lynda, that's quite a sight. I was wondering how do you water all those buckets? I did grow tomatoes in containers last year and had a good harvest but I felt it could have been better. Recently I read on the MOther Earth news - a system of creating a self watering system using 2 buckets, a funnel and a wick. I'm going to give it a try next time. Perhaps it can cut down on watering frequency for me.