Hello Syreeta,

Looks like someone has been working hard!
Looks good.
Oh to be young with lots of energy!

Ian

Looks great Syreeta! I like the round rocks as edging especially.

I have one little project I finished this summer - my new brick wall rose bed. The bricks are cool, I dug them out of my driveway and hedge. They're pretty old and some of them say things like "St. Louis Standard Co." and Ajax and stuff.

The roses are Champlain, Autumn Sunset (not blooming at the moment unfortunately) and r. Gallica Versicolor. They were all tiny babies this spring. I have no before pic but the stump used to be a Manitoba Maple tree and the rest was just a grassy slope.

We moved from a full sun house to a yard full of mature birches and lots of other trees.

I tried making new beds using a couple of methods. I'm too pooped to spend a summer digging around tree roots, so one bed was cardboard with organic material piled on and planted. It did very well.

The second was cardboard with dirt piled. This one looks super also. The third was a traditionally dug bed and it filled up with weeds. No more digging beds for me.

I managed to make a sand pit for my youngest child and used the leftover sand to make a small patio.

Planted 8 more trees and 10 bushes, got the composting system set up and going well.

This fall I still want to transplant some ferns and get another bed going.

Nothing hugely permanent, but definately fun to start over again in a new place.

Gloria

Ian, thanks for the compliment. I did have fun doing all the work, well DH did help out. He used the jackhammer on the walkway and hauled it away for me. Unfortunately now I have nowhere to tie the dogs when I'm gardening out front. I had used one of the trees which worked great, can't anymore. :(

Gillian, your new bed looks pretty great! I'll trade some of my rocks for your bricks. :) To buy those here I would have to pay an arm and a leg. The rocks might of been lots of work hauling them home from the sides of logging roads but at least they were free. What do you have growing up the trelis? Or is it another rose? Plus I was going to ask you what you were going to do with the stump from the maple? What might look neat is if you drilled it out and filled it with soil and made a pot out of it. I don't know if you could overwinter anything in it (would it be the same as the ground?) but annuals would still look nice.

Syreeta

Gloria, i've dug some beds because i wanted to use the soil that comes out of them. What i've done is dig them out and line them with a thick layer of newspaper. That helps with the weeds. I call them "Deep Dish Lasagne Beds". :>

Autumn Sunset (rose) is on the trellis - it's a climber but I'm not sure if it will really climb - I will have to see how much dies back over the winter. The trellis is only screwed on so I might move it. Plus, I didn't think but Autumn Sunset's flowers are exactly the same colour as the cedar wood and don't show up well - duh!

The stump belongs to my dog - it's his rightful place where he is allowed to stand in the garden and patrol the neighbour's barbecue. I actually have another stump at the back that had ants in the tree so it has a big hole in it. I have been planning to plant a petunia or something in it - funny you had the same idea!

Gloria,
I didn't dig right around my trees either. I didn't feel like digging through the roots plus I was worried about harming the trees. If I weakened them and they came down in a wind storm on the house that would be my most expensive gardening project yet. :Syreeta

All your projects look and sound great!!!

We have started so many projects this summer....I guess I could say my fence on the one side is the one project that got completely finished. Other projects are almost completed and hopefully they will be before the snow flys.

I posted this before but here it is again. I did learn something this season though......The white plastic urns are hard to disguise at best.....I have never really liked the look......but this season I put the hanging begonias in two of them.....and I really like the look. This pic was at the beginning of the growing season...so they hadn't covered them yet. I'll use them for the same next season.

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Sierra

Wonderful transformations gals....the only major project I did this summer was the extention bed out in the front garden(lasagna method), it now goes all around the trellis bench, at least 50 feet of bed to plant MORE plants next year ;) No photos yet but I will next year.

Today we are getting a new green roof to the house....no sweat on my part because some contractors are doing it and no sweat in the pocket book either, it was a generous gift from the inlaws ;)

We were suppose to get a new deck built this year, we just might yet before winter if....as some of you know that hubby's sprain ankle turned out to be a crack, he's been in a cast since the August long-weekend and can't really do any heavy stuff.

The raised beds in the back garden, I'm kind of debating on that now....I think I just might add 5 tons of manure this fall and work it in good....will see, I'm always changing my mind ;)

Sharon

Nice garden projects everyone..We didn't add any flowerbeds this year but did some landscaping around our deck stairs. It was an area that was hard to get the lawn tractor close enough to keep the grass mowed and just one more area to spend time weed whipping..We put a concrete pad under the stairs ..laid down 2 layers of black plastic ,cut holes for the plants and then rocked it...savona
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Hi Guys,
Here are my new beds this year.
Click on thumbnails to view.

Ian

Only 2 big projects this year in a new-to-me house. A few small ones of removing plants I decided I didn't like and fixing border bricks etc as well as one removal of a tiny pond to be replaced by trellises next year.
Big projects:
I cut out a 7ftX60ft veggie garden in the back yard and started experimental sections with plastic, rows, or coplanting in patches (and still haven't decided if I want the rabbit fence to stay)
Old picture of part of it-
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Also put in a huge (over 60sqft) lasagna bed out front with 8-10 kids help (I lost count of which kids in neghborhood were here then!). I'm not too sure I appreciate lasagna with newspaper, as a neighborhood dog (not this helper picced here)has been digging in all my flowerbeds (old and new) and in lasagna bed it let grass through! Also, it's difficult to make sure everything stays down with paper, even in the "hole" in the lawn I filled in here (It was a huge area that had once been a bed and sank when previous owners converted back to lawn) Next year will do it with cardboard to another patch of lawn near a tree. In the spring I will plant a plum tree and perennials in this bed.

Old pics
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Wow, great thread! It's always so interesting to see different styles of gardening. I also get a chance to steal other peoples ideas, as I don't consider myself to be overly creative. lol
My project this year was installing a pond with a patio beside it. The actual hole was dug last October, but everything else was done this summer. I've still got some planting to do around it, but hopefully this will get done by the end of the month.

Here's a few pics of it in progress.

This turned out to be our single biggest project to date. It still needs a bit of tweaking and give it a couple years to fill in, and I think I'll be very happy with it.

Laurie

Here is a link that might be useful: New pond

These are all really fabulous efforts - cudos to all!

My big project was changing the driveway bed into a rock garden, and you've all already seen pics of that transformation. I had planned a second big project - taking over a 20'x20' area of lawn for a new garden, but when I laid it all out before starting to kill the grass, I didn't like it. Kinda like wanting that new sweater until you finally try it on and you land up hating it, LOL. I'm still thinking about it - maybe the design in my head was just all wrong.

I did some hypertufa - that's been on the 'to do' list for a while. And the much needed culvert at the end of the driveway finally got installed. Our street is not paved and water runoff is not really a well thought out process by the powers to be in the town, so we constantly had puddles and mud where the street and the driveway meet. The culvert, with a lot of crushed rock on top of it all fixed that problem.

Now I'm thinking about next year's projects. Hmmm...

Today hubby and I collected some rocks and boulders with the tractor, he drove and I guided. I am extending outwards the rock garden on the west side of the garage, I still have to roundup the grass in there and add some sand and pebbles and of course rock plants. I also plan on building some kind of rustic looking trellis and growing some kind of Clematis against the wall and paint the trim and door.

I did some arranging of the rocks as well today, but will probably do some rearranging once the plants go in.

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All the plants in the back were planted this year, so by next year, hopefully it will be impressive ;)

Laurie, I love your pond, just the perfect size, not too small and not too big....how did you dig that hole? By hand or Bobcat?

I have a pond too, but its way to small, it is just one of those black prefab ponds. I'm going to have do some figuring and planning on a bigger pond for next years' project now ;)

Sharon

Find any flat rocks out there, Sharon? I'm looking for stepping stones! LOL

That will certainly be impressive when you're done!

Just a few Marcia, I too I'm looking for lots of flat rock for my future pond.....I really hate to buy any, so I'll have to ask the farmers around here if they have any rock piles in their fields that I can have.

Maybe I can get hubby to slegehammer some round ones. He really does love me... LOL

Sharon

Sharon, your rock garden is going to look fabulous! I just love rock in the garden, it gives it those 'bones' that designers talk about, and the winter interest is always a bonus.
The hole for the pond was actually dug by a backhoe, as we had to get one in to fix the sewer pumpout anyway. It took him all of 20 minutes, and with 35 years experience under his belt, the bucket was an extention of his arm.....a real art!
At least now that this growing season is winding down, you'll have all winter to design your bigger pond ;)
Laurie

Oh, I meant to comment on this the other day ... excellent, Sharon - that's going to look awesome. I also wondered - will you leave the rocks just where they are and roundup around them, or move them and place them again, or? I can't imagine you'll be moving the boulders again, right?

I know what you mean, Laurie, about experience with a machine making it look like art. My brother used to work in forestry in BC (cutting trees, or limbing them or something, with a chainsaw). He recently cut some birch into discs for me and that's exactly how that big chainsaw looked - like an extension of his arm. I actually commented that he made it look like art, and I think I made my big brother blush! LOL

"I think I made my big brother blush!" That's too funny Pudge! This guy was able to follow the paint line that I had sprayed to within an inch! And the bucket had to have been 3 feet wide......if I had known how impressive it was going to be, I would have video taped it!

Thanks Laurie and Pudge,

Right now its just a rough arrangement, I did Round-Up it yesterday with the rocks in place but I plan on ordering a truck load of sand on my next days off and will most likely pick up the rocks that I can and replace them here and there and I will probably move them two or three more times once I start planting. LOL There is no way I can move the boulders, unless I get hubby to chain them and pick them up with the tractor to another spot...I believe IÂm pushing my luck on that request ;)

Next spring before I start the planting, I will Round-Up it again just incase of any grass coming thru.

Do you think a tractor with a bucket will dig up dirt to make a pond?

Sharon

Well, depending on how deep you want to make it........but it would sure get you started ;)

Ok I finally got some pics scanned of the one perennial bed that we put in this year....so here goes...

The planning stage....to get the curves right...took a couple of weeks and moving the hose till we finally found a design that we liked.
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Then we cut and dug out the sod and packed it to the back in the wheel barrow to help fill the revine in the back.
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Then hand dug......to remove dandylions that pulled out of sod and to loosen clay. Gypsum was also dug in at this time.
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Then a couple truck loads of compost were added....and were also hand dug in to mix with the clay. Then a top dressed with more compost.
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Then many plants were moved from my back gardens into this bed. Also many plants were given to me from friends to add to this bed.
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More plants have been added after this pic was taken....not much room left.
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I did move plants that were in full bloom and in bud....or this project would never get done this year. I still have to add some tulips and narcissi probably today or this weekend.

Sierra.....who thinks gardening is VERY good exercise. LOL!

Really nice job Sierra! I like the shape of the bed.....it flows really well. After I finish a bed, the first thing I always say to myself is, it'll look so much better next year when it fills in. I think I have to focus more on the now, instead of tomorrow :^)
Great job!
Laurie

Thanks Laurie. I did get an idea what it will look like for the most part because many plants were blooming...although it did look a little rough.

I just realized I put the same photo twice...dohhhhhh Here is what the last photo was supposed to be....

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Sierra

This is another project that is now completed as of yesterday when I added the fall bulbs.

This one started out with landscape ties that were taken from the side of the driveway where the fence was built. There were 8 of them so suggested making a box with them. For part of the summer we put down landscape fabric over the grass and set the planters on top.
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Then decided that 3 boxes would look better across the front yard. Following the same steps in the project mentioned above...taking out the sod and digging to loosen the clay and digging in the compost.
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This is the 3 boxes front view.
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Close view.
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Back views of the boxes.
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I am sure these will look better next year...some of the plants didn't take to well to being moved....the peonies for one fell flat as can be seen here.....I have to cut everything back...when I find the time, which might be next spring. LOL.

Sierra

Wow gosh Sierra that WAS a lot of work! It looks great and I'm sure it will be amazing when the plants fill in. I'm planning to do something similar to your square boxes for a raised bed vegetable garden next year. My veg garden is immense and I can't keep up with weeding it all, so we are thinking of about 8 boxes like that and only plant what we're actually going to eat, rather than hand vegetables out to the neighbours.

Oops, this thread was supposed to be what DID you do, not what are you never going to get around to next year... LOL.

Hi Gillian, LOL

The scary thing is...there are still many plants in the back that should be moved but no where to move them.

Still working on the dahlia bed.....If the weather holds we should have the rest of the sod removed today, and clay loosened and the gypsum added. Then in the next couple of weeks the compost will be added.....so its ready for the dahlias next spring.

What I have found that I like for the veggie garden is 4ft wide and how ever long.....Its much easier to plant and weed and pick veggies with the area only 4ft wide. You don't have to step in the beds, 2 ft (on each side) is more of a comfortable reach. Also I use the square foot method....so much less space is needed......I also don't have the wood around the veggie gardens....I use raised beds with sloping sides. That way I can change the shape and size of the beds, if I decide to.

Sierra