My Garden Odyssey: Final prep

Episode XIII

HE SAID: We were finally nearing the point when all our garden talk would be translated into action. My plan was just about complete. We'd found a landscape architect to work with us. We were almost there. Just a few final details to finish: dealing with all the necessary experts and getting their reports on Soil/Safety/Trees/Slope.

First, we did a series of soil tests of various parts of the garden through the UW-Madison Soil & Plant Analysis Lab. 

 

SHE SAID: Then we called "Diggers Hotline." This 24/7 line is operated by the utility companies and must be called any time you're going to dig a trench, excavate, or build a fence to make sure you don't sever gas, electric or water lines. They come out and mark everything (above) to keep you, and their lines, safe.

Before we began construction we called Bruce Allison, certified arborist and author of two of my favorite books: "Every Root an Anchor: Wisconsin's Famous and Historic Trees" and "Wisconsin's Champion Trees." Allison came out and identified all the trees on our property, talked with us about what to keep, suggested the best place to build the pond to protect the roots of our major trees, and helped me calculate the age of our Bur Oak. His crew then did a superb job of pruning our big trees which had been virtually untouched since they'd been planted. (A regular pruning schedule for these important trees is now part of our maintenance plan). 

Finally, to save money, we decided to survey our lot ourselves one springlike Saturday. As a result, I now know that our property slopes 14 feet from the back lot line down to the front curb. Mark rented a transit and I was his assistant, marking off the measurements every 10 feet — in two directions — on a sheet of graph paper. That means we had 200 points to measure, minus the ones covered by the house and driveway (above).

This may sound crazy but it was actually a critical step. We needed these numbers in order to dig a pond into the side of a hill without having the water slosh over the edge and into the living room — which was at the foot of the slope. Moving long tape measures, standing around in between, and then noting measurements on a piece of paper are not my ideal tasks. This little job took hours.

When the sun went behind the clouds and snow started falling, we had just enough measuring left to do to make the day miserable. By the time we finished, we were not only questioning the wisdom of this whole garden idea, we were wondering why we had gotten married. But, as Daniel Mount said to us in a recent comment, "realizing what you must give up to have a garden only adds value." 

 

HE SAID: My design called for digging a three and a half foot deep pond as well as a thirty foot stream with a smaller pond to act as a headwater. The excavated soil would then be used to form a pair of mounds behind the pond. Knowing the slope of the land allowed me to calculate the amount of soil we would be moving. 

SHE SAID: During much of our planning time we'd been stockpiling rocks, initially at Madison Block & Stone, until we had enough for the boom truck to deliver to our driveway. We had the early loads piled off the actual driveway on my intended plant holding bed. But as we got closer to starting construction, rocks started getting piled on the lawn on the opposite side of the driveway and eventually on the driveway itself (above).

Our front yard began to look like the kind of house where an abandoned fridge or a rusty car up on blocks might show up next. I think our neighbors we're a little nervous — but also more than a little curious. As a result, they came over to check us out and stayed to become helpers, donators of materials, and eventually, fans of our pond project.

One neighbor called us up to offer a multi-stem Pagoda Dogwood tree (Cornus alternifolia, above) that he'd planted too close to his house and had to go. It took Mark and three neighbors to get it out of the ground and onto our truck. But we managed to get it onto the front lawn and planted by ourselves. Today it's so big we've begun to trim the lower branches of the sugar and silver maples it grows beneath. 

It was a huge gesture of welcome and a significant financial gift as well. At the nursery, that tree would have easily cost us $150. Today, that neighbor and Mark are good buddies who share advice on everything from books to trucks.

Our right-next-door neighbor had his stone driveway walls redone at about this time and gave us all his unused limestone (below). Initially Mark turned it into an Andy Goldsworthy stone pile but eventually they were all used to line the inside edge of the pond. Then another neighbor called to say he was dismantling his brick patio and told us we could have the bricks, but we had to haul them away ourselves. He only lived three doors down from us but we were truck-less at the time. So Mark spent a weekend ferrying wheelbarrow loads of bricks house to house!

One of the last — and biggest — jobs was taking out a 50-year-old arborvitae tree (probably Thuja plicata) at the corner of the house. It had to go to make a path for the track hoe to get into our back yard.

HE SAID: After estimating the height of the tree (about 50 feet), and measuring the distance between our house and our neighbor's (25 feet), I realized I had a bit of a problem. The solution I came up with, being decended from two families of lumberjacks, was to climb the tree and "top" each trunk. Being a clever husband I waited until Linda was away to tackle the job. 

She came home to find me with one foot on the roof of the house and one on a limb of the tree, sawing with both hands. Her question to me was: "Do you want me to call an ambulance now, or wait until you fall?"

I left six feet of trunk to act as a lever to pull the root ball out of the ground. I had a thirty foot heavy duty chain and a sturdy Ford F-350 pick-up truck. I had dug an eighteen inch deep trench in a six foot diameter circle around the base of the tree, cutting all the roots that I found. I drew the chain up taught, revved the engine, and slowly let the clutch out. The truck drove forward just far enough to lift the back end completely off the ground! The tree didn't budge.

After digging the trench deeper, cutting more roots, and soaking the ground around the the arborvitae overnight I finally managed to pull the thing out onto the driveway and down to the curb. A week later a city supervisor — clipboard in hand — came to my door and asked what I had planed for the stump and root ball. I played the honesty card, fell on his mercy and said I didn't have a clue. He finally agreed to have a city truck and crew pick it up if I could reduce it to a size their mechanical claws could handle.

At last the night before D-Day arrived. Dig Day, that is. I spent the late afternoon and early evening making final decissions about rock placement. I had been studying some of them for over a year and now it was time to commit. With the crew and equipment arriving in the morning, there would be little time to dither over what rock to put where. So, with chalk in hand and a chart with all the major rocks numbered, I marked their orientation to the house and the depth to which they would be set (below).

 

Then I tried to get some sleep.

 

Read other episodes of the history of our garden by clicking on "My Garden Odyssey" in the categories column.

Comments

[Pam/Digging]

Oh my, guys. You've made me tired just thinking about all the raw materials you moved in preparation. I can't believe Mark got that huge tree down by himself.

Whew. Well, I'm eager to see how the rock placement progressed in the next installment.

[LINDA from EACH LITTLE WORLD]

There are a lot of houses in our neighborhood with great rocks in the garden. One even has a long rock wall. I'm sure they are all from when the houses were built and the rocks were uncovered. There were no big rocks here when we moved in and we only found a couple of tiny ones digging the pond. Alas, all our rocks were purchased, which sometimes seemed so crazy — spending our days working to make money to buy rocks!

I think one of the things about doing projects you've never tried before, is you don't think too much about what you're getting yourself into. The first few years all we did was work in the garden! We were dirty, sweaty and exhausted all the time. Luckily at about that point, it all started to look like a garden instead of a construction site. And everything seemed worth it!