EPISODE III
When my husband, Mark, and I went hunting for our first house, a large yard was one of our top priorities. After years of apartment gardening, I was ready for the real thing. Living right in the midst of the city was the other priority. But until we started looking, we didn't realize that those two conditions were almost mutually exclusive.
Luckily, we went on a tour of urban gardens that showed us the potential of small lots. In fact, it showed us that limitations seemed to bring out the creativity of many gardeners. We stopped worrying and found our dream house: an 1899 Queen Anne with the unheard-of luxury of a 2 and 1/2 car garage behind it. Never mind that the garage was made of cement blocks and was listing slightly.
SOLD: We take pictures of our new house (center) to begin planning even before we move in. The dirt driveway that we will share with our neighbors in the blue house is clearly visible, as am I standing on the curb.
Since this house also had the smallest lot of any house we looked at, we decided it would be pretentious of us to hire a landscape architect to turn the space into a garden. We were artists, after all, and I'd been reading garden books for years in preparation for this very moment. Mark's interest was in all the architectural and hardscaping features like arbors and brick paths.
THE BLANK SLATE: The garden with grass, a tree and children's toys.
He's also terrific at visualizing in three dimensions and translating those images into drawings and even models. I am a complete failure in this area so his skills have been critical. Without them, I don't think we would have ever made a satisfactory garden — let alone been gardening together almost twenty years later.
STEPPING STONES MUST GO: The back door is the one most often used and needs a better path. The fire escape is a remnant from when the house was divided into two flats. It had been restored to a single family home again when we bought it.
Creating that first garden — and our current garden — also took a lot of time talking, looking, planning and learning to work together. It didn't hurt that Mark worked evenings and could garden during the day. I would take over when I came home from my job.
We started with a wish list of what our ideal garden should include — never mind that it was only 40 feet long, narrowing from 24 feet wide directly behind the house to 12 feet wide at the far end. It was, in fact, a mirror image of the driveway. And it was small enough that it was going to be difficult to have areas that were hidden from view the way all the books suggest.
STEPPING STONE DEBRIS: Except for the two logs, this pile of pavers, stones and boards all came out of the area between the driveway and back steps. It was a big job pulling everything out in preparation for the new sidewalk — the job we had originally anticipated as the "big" one.
OUR GARDEN WISH LIST
Make the back entrance more attractive
Give the garden (yard) a sense of separation from the driveway
Increase our privacy from neighbors' views on both sides
Add a berm or some kind of raised element to break up the flatness of the space
Maximize the potential for sun by moving the only tree — which was situated so it would ultimately shade the entire growing area
Add an outsize element — like sculpture — to give a sense of scale to the garden
Paint the house in new colors and without the coloring book outlines it had when we bought it
Pave the shared driveway between our house and our neighbors' house
LIMESTONE LINES THE NEW DRIVEWAY: More of our recycled limestone window frames line the driveway to make a crisp edge before its paved with blacktop.
We spent the first two years working on our plan as well as doing the non-glamorous but essential projects like wiring the garage for electricity (which involved digging a trench the length of the garden), building a big 3-section compost bin that we shared with neighbors, and moving plants from the apartment garden to holding beds in the new garden.
We also discovered all the junk that was in the way of whatever project we wanted to undertake and thus had to deal with first. That included removing the assorted stepping stones and wood edging near the back door, a job that turned into a massive headache as we pulled out more and more debris.
VISUALIZING A SCULPTURAL CENTERPIECE: I'm holding a broom over my head to visualize what an 11-foot-tall sculpture would look like. I'm standing on a piece of cardboard that is the size of the base for the proposed limestone obelisk. You can see yellow ropes on the ground outlining potential patio designs.
One of the most significant things we did the first year was to add an 11-foot-tall limestone obelisk to the garden as a focal point. Mark designed it and built it out of recycled stone window frames that he cut to size with a masonry blade on a circular saw. The stone frames were about to go from a University building to a landfill when he rescued them. He got permission from the U and from the contractor to haul them away (in a rented truck with help from this brothers). We are still using fragments of that stone. The obelisk came with us and has been moved a couple of times since, and rebuilt in a new configuation each time.
NEW STEPS TAKE SHAPE: More limestone is used for the new sidewalk from the driveway to the back steps. Small black pebbles will fill the spaces between the stone pavers. The rock in the curve marks the future home of a standard lilac tree. The obelisk is visible in the center of the "garden" and a raised rock garden will eventually go where the umbrella table and chairs are located. There's still part of a concrete path coming from the outside basement entrance. Holding beds line the fence and the area by the basement steps.
The other significant event was the realization that our design did not take winter snow into consideration. We had been planning on a long wood-lattice wall where we could train vines to visually and physically separate the garden from the driveway. Instead we ditched that concept when we saw how much snow had to be shoveled off of the driveway and onto the garden. And if you look at the photo of the shared driveway you will see there was virtually no room to pile snow between the houses either.
SNO'WHERE TO GO: We gave up our original idea for a tall lattice wall to separate the garden and the driveway and to provide privacy, when we realized we needed to be able to pile snow on the garden and couldn't have design elements that would impede that winter necessity. The standard lilac is in place by the back entrance sticking up out of the snow.
We were lucky that we had not gone beyond the planning stage when we discovered our snowy mistake. We hadn't even bought any materials. It taught us the value of going slow. But in a garden as small as this one, once you get started, things can happen pretty quickly and even small changes can make a big difference.
A fun odyssey with a learning curve! We had similar snow issues in our home and had to remove a few bushes. Speaking of bushes, I enjoyed your gardener’s X-mas tree.
Posted by: Sarah Laurence | Wednesday, December 10, 2008 at 10:28 AM
Nothing like snow to put a crimp in one's ideas. Just had a big snow here and it is still an issue with our border garden along the driveway. All the boxwoods located there are now buried. Most made it through last winter's snow, but it is always a bit touch and go!
Posted by: LINDA from EACH LITTLE WORLD | Wednesday, December 10, 2008 at 10:43 AM
This is a fabulous series, Linda. Can you give me an idea of when these images were taken--how many years ago?
Posted by: Pam/Digging | Tuesday, January 06, 2009 at 08:42 AM