Here's another photo of the circle garden. I wish I could find the photo of this area from 4 years ago. There was a very large tulip poplar standing right about where the middle far right of this photo is. The neighbors had a huge oak too. The fence was chain link and there was a simple raised bed ringing the violet lawn in a horseshoe shape. There were some large shrubs and a 2 year established garden all grown from seed or cutting. Everything got wiped out, and we had to start from scratch. The first year HUGE slabs of concrete (you can barely see them) were brought in to shape the walkway, then I began building bed edges - that took two years of more moving cement and building the soil back as flooding in the area after the tornado took away all the beautiful soil I'd worked so hard on creating. Luckily I had some occasional help with this backbreaking work! We did everything (except lifting the slabs) by hand. It is amazing how much compost is in here (about 17 yards)and mulch (probably 6 yards, not quite done yet). The project has been very rewarding as this is what I literally have dreamed this garden will look like. It will have some shade again in a few years (which it needs) and hopefully a tunnel of roses (and climbing veggies nad fruit) over the circular slab walkway. Already it has become home to a neighbors hundreds and thousands of honey bees! They are just glorious!

Congratulations! It is so lovely! I really like the bottle tree with the purple fence, too. Your labor of love paid off.

Cameron

Very inviting. Congrats on all your hard work.

love how it came out, saw some of your pictures from last year and it is so nice! you have done alot of work and now it is paying off! What are the tall plants in the foreground of the second picture?
roseberri

Good work! Those slabs look huge. I love the way you edged the beds.
Renee

Ha Ha. Tall plants in foreground are kale. It's still going strong!

GGG...it is looking great! So much hard work. I remember all your troubles getting the drainage right in your yard. Is it all "fixed" now?

I was wondering the same thing. Are the drainage problems solved?
How do you plan to construct your tunnel of roses?

GGG, it looks great, all your hard work paid off big time, now, if you have some spare time how about coming up here and waving that hard working magic wand of yours over my weed patch. NO you say, oh well, it was worth a try :).

Annette

Thanks all. This area is just a drop in the bucket of the larger part of the yard. Essentially another front yard - for which we have 3 small front yards (we have 21/2 properties).
The drainage problems are not solved! We have permits going in this week sometime to start the process again. It's taken forever to find the right people with good solutions and a concern for both our financial and environmental needs.
Sadly because we had not been able to fix the drainage properly, erosion caused the demise of our last two large trees. So for our City officials who have been styming the process because of "saving the trees" their ignorance has caused the death of these trees and more bills for us to pay for their removal.
So now we start again. We are planning to have drainage work done later this summer (hopefully getting permits, for which some of the City workers said they will swiftly grant after seeing the problems we've had) and then in fall and winter we can plant trees, make raised beds, put in some retaining walls and a patio and a few walkways and get things going on a much grander scale!
I fixed the drainage in this area by raising everything behind that stacked cement and adding tons of compost. Water would come up from the area below this when it rained (current drainage system not big enough) and slowly flood this area. Now water just can't get up into here. I simply took a few low walls. We'll put a retaining wall a few yards below this area, at the bottom of the slope and some drainage pipes under neath that area (it will get a few tons of compost added for garden beds) and we should have this entire half of the yard taken care of for drainage.
One savior has been to capture almost all the water that comes off of our roof. I plan to do the same for the roof next door. Tons of water for the garden and no extra water (other than what collects from neighboring properties) to add to the problems.
Rose tunnels: rebar and flexible cement wire panels. I already have the rebar!