Each Little World

Looking back at the gardening year: 2023

It was a very mixed year in terms of garden successes; a better year in terms of learning more about gardening in this changing climate. More importantly, acknowledging my bad habits online and in the garden.

I ordered a lot of plants online last winter. Come spring, it was clear that I had too many things to deal with at one time as we had frost for ages. That meant I had plants everywhere indoors and was wheeling big planters in and out of the garage day after day as night approached and bringing them out again in the morning. And that's after having potted them up in the garage and basement rather than outdoors on my work table. These up and down Spring temperatures seem to be one of our new norms.

I continued to add more shrubs, native and non, as a way to reduce maintenance, but keep the garden looking good. Last year's drought and extremely high temps reminded me that new plantings need an incredible amount of attention (and water) to survive the trauma of planting. I lost two expensive evergreens in short order and a third by late summer. Even old reliables suffered with the weather.

I may be the gardener and thus responsible, but I am going to blame my losses and other problems on our weather/climate issues. This year it was still too hot and dry to plant much in the autumn which historically has been an optimum planting time. I was still dragging hoses and watering cans around until it got cold enough that we had to turn off the outside faucets. 

I overwintered a Eucomis that I received as a door prize at a garden party in 2021 and fell in love with it. I want to try a couple more this year. I won't reorder any Calla lily which left me unenthused. In 2022 I planted a dozen Byzantine gladioli in two pots and swooned over them all season. So last year I planted 3 dozen in 5 pots and felt oppressed with watering and deadheading them. It was definitely a lesson in "less is more."

When I order plants online in the winter, I always know where I am going to put them so it feels like I have a plan. I am now going to admit that it is a dream and not a plan, given how many plants don't go where I intended. There's no room for them, they don't look good with their neighbors or they aren't getting all they require to succeed, like sun or moisture. Less ordering and more thinking needed. 

Now it's time for me to come up with a serious list of what needs attention in the garden and what plants or shrubs might I plan on getting, preferably locally. In the winter I am mentally gardening like a 35 year old. I need to remember that come spring, I am more than twice that age with a very large garden. Time to get real. 

The first freeze

For all the years we had the pond, I always noted when it froze over for the first time in the autumn and when he thawed in the spring. Though our new water feature is much smaller, I am going to use it as my weather guide. 

As was so often the case with the big pond, it froze this first week of November. It froze solid, in fact on Wednesday, Nov. 3rd. We haven't decided yet if we will leave it uncovered to freeze and thaw all winter or if we need to cover it for protection.  

Pond re-design: The final frontier

Before adding the next layer of fill to the pond, Mark put down permeable weed barrier.

The weed barrier is intended to keep the layer of screened top soil from filtering below. 

We took advantage of a big hole partly full of dirt to replicate our portrait taken on the day we started to build the pond in 1997.

Once the soil brought the pond level up high, Mark attacked the stream bed and waterfalls. He took out all the rocks from that area, piling them temporarily on the soil in the big pond. Then he removed as much rubber liner and carpet from the stream as possible. A number of the rocks in this area were set with a bobcat and two people. 

We were lucky to be able to borrow a couple of contractor's wheelbarrows. These are built to carry loads of concrete. Even empty, I could barely lift and move them. 

Mark's assistant, Angelo, had no trouble moving them full of dirt or gravel. Everything had to go from the driveway up an incline into the back. Angelo was amazing in how quickly he could move those barrows. 

The soil layer also got rained on which helped to settle it and let Mark determine if his calculations were correct. 

At this point, Mark began preparing for the final layer: Quartzite chips. He put wooden stakes in the ground, linked with string, to indicate the depth the chips needed to be, tiny surveyor's stakes. 

The quartzite chips needed to be put down without mixing any dirt up into this final layer. We were following the system that Olbrich Botanical Gardens uses in their sustainable gravel gardens. 

Once all the quartzite chips were settled on top of the soil. Mark began to level the pond surface. (It may not hold water but Mark and I still call it the big pond, stream and upper pool.) This was amazing to me to watch as he went the length of the pond on his hands and knees with a long, even board, a level and smaller pieces of wood to smooth the surface. 

He took design breaks to work on placement of the stones around the pond edges. The round stone was moved a number of times, getting it just the right distance from the pebble beach. 

You can see he changed his mind on how this area should be edged compared to the big stone blocks he experimented with above.

This view from the Upper Pool shows the stepping stones that cross it and the top of the stream on the other side of them. 

Even the stream bed has raked patterns. 

The sharply curving rock in the bottom pool of the stream symbolizes a jumping fish. 

Once Mark removed that wide swath of Carexes to make his working "bridge," we decided not to replace any of them. Instead he created a beautiful little path down to the east end of the big pond.

He set a grindstone into the quartzite chips so you could step out into the pond for a different experience than just viewing from a distance. 

Mark's first raking design was a very traditional linear pattern, the length of the pond. 

The big stones in the pond and the curving edges mean there will always be curvilinear patterns. 

This is where the stream meets the pond. 

I love this view from the path between the two hills in the garden. It is a view I rarely noticed when the pond had water. 

This was his first raindrop pattern, which was quickly followed by more elaborate version. 

This was his most recent pattern: diagonal lines across the width of the pond. Though it is a very simple design, it has proven one of the most effective because we can "read" it from inside the house. It also gets lit by east and west raking sun which makes the pattern pop.

Mark began this project on April 4th and finished on Aug. 17 — four and a half months later. It was an almost daily effort; whether with a wheelbarrow or a pen and paper. We couldn't be happier with the result. We celebrated the "unveiling" with an open garden event in early September. It was also Mark's 75th birthday. 

Pond re-design: Filling it back up

Mark said he would build a "bridge" over my Carexes that edged the east end of the pond. That way he could move fill material into the empty pond without harming my big sweep of this fabulous ground cover. My notes suggest I only ever planted one Carex siderosticha 'Variegata' on Oct. 1, 1997. Since that was the end of our first summer of building the pond, I may have just bought one as an accent plant. 

No matter how many plants I started with or how many times I've divided it, I never tire of this plant. I also never see it for sale anymore, so I did not want to take a chance on losing any. 

I told Mark they would not survive four months under a wooden structure. So he dug out a big patch of them where his bridge was going to be. I was happy with his response, but it meant I unexpectedly had another planting project that had not been on my radar at all. 

While I tried to keep my Carexes alive and find new homes for them, Mark added all our concrete debris from last year's deck re-do, along with big concrete blocks discarded by our neighbor. 

He smashed some of the larger pieces up to make everything fit as solidly as possible into the deep center pond area. 

He screwed a board at the end of his bridge to stop the wheelbarrow and hold it in place while he tipped it up and dumped debris. 

The next layer was 4 tons of washed pea gravel which was delivered in mid-June. At this point Mark had been working on the big pond or the Upper Pool since the beginning of April. 

The pea gravel layer is the base for the two finishing layers.

Mark or his very able assistant, Angelo, would bring a barrow load of gravel from the pile in the driveway into the back garden. Then they would empty it into another wheelbarrow down in the pond. 

Mark's main job was to then spread the loads around the pond surface.

Though we had a very dry summer, we did get enough rain at times to let us see how water was being absorbed into the ground in this area. 

Almost ready for the finishing layers of fill. 

The next two pictures show what the edge of the pond looked like at this point. Most of the decorative stone from the edges has been put out of the way of the work. 

You can clearly see where the original water level in the pond came to on this rock which was within the pond. 

Mark carefully calculated the depth of each fill layer he was putting in the pond. That way the final layer would be at the level he wanted. 

Meanwhile I found places for my many bins of Carex siderosticha 'Variegata'. 

I had been planting the big slope above the pond since 2019 when I replaced weedy dying grass with a swath of Hakonechloa macra across the lower part of the hill. Though I planned to use Carex pennsylvanica to fill this area, I decided it would be a good spot to add my variegated Carex as well. 

I put some of the Carex along the edge of the path between the two hills and then started filling in down the slope.

I decided the Carex would bring a little visual light to the area while it functioned as green mulch. I also added a couple of my boxwood seedlings that had attained a reasonable size.

This area is where we took out one of the Scots pines on the slope last summer. Sensitive ferns (Onoclea sensibility) had seeded themselves around its trunk. They are lovely when they first show up in spring but want more moisture than they are getting in this spot. Plus they disappear early, making a very visible brown spot.  

I moved a lackluster shrub — Chamaecyparis obtuse 'Hibari' — into the center of the ferns. I am hoping it will get more light here and do better. I am going to move the Sensitive ferns to a new home come spring. This photo (below) is not in the correct order of the process but it shows the areas of Penn Sedge that I planted on the left and right sides of the slope this spring.

The area with the ferns etc. is above the newly planted Carex Pennsylvanica on the left. The variegated Carexes are in a big clump behind the trunk of the Scots pine on the left. The bright greens are Penn sedge higher on the hill and Japanese forest grass across the lower part of the slope.

Next up: The finishing layers

Pond re-design: Getting started on the big pond

The big pond was pretty sad looking this spring, which made it easier to say goodbye. 

Once the Upper Pool was redone, Mark began by emptying the big pond. He used a diverter valve (white section) on the pond pump to send the water off to the side, instead of up to the top pool as we'd been doing for 24 years. 

The water could then be sent wherever in the garden we wanted it via this 75' long blue hose. 

Once most of the water was gone, it revealed all the oxygenator plants, potted water lilies and goop. We were able to give lilies and oxygenators to friends with water gardens. 

Once the pond was empty of water, the faithful pump was pulled. It could move 5,400 gallons of water per hour.

At this point Mark was working in waders or Wellies in the pond trying to get everything out that was revealed as the water disappeared. 

Mark pulled out all kinds of edge rocks and small stones that he wanted to reuse and made piles of them outside the pond edges. He piled muck on the top "shelf" of the pond interior so he could begin to cut out the rubber layer. The rubber and the carpet layer underneath it took a tremendous amount of time and effort to cut through and remove. 

This top of this wall ended just under the surface of the pond water, separating the main pond from the bog. The wall let water into the bog and kept the soil from washing into the pond. These two rocks were standing in the water. 

This shows the limestone wall around the pond. Some rubber has been removed and the carpet layer has been revealed. 

Now the carpet layer is gone in part of the pond and Mark is piling dried out debris in the deepest level of the pond — 3 feet below ground level. 

This is the sand layer hard-packed after being under 7,500 gallons of water for 24 years. The lowest layer is full of organic debris. The area at the bottom of the photo is the former "Pebble Beach" which was just slightly under water at the end with the round stone. 

Mark added the carpet layer when we built the pond as extra protection so tree roots would not puncture the rubber liner. It was clear that all kinds of big roots had been stopped just as he hoped. You can see some rubber still in place under the walls and big bog rocks.  

Emptying the pond was the first step of this project. It was much harder and took longer than I think Mark had hoped. But all through the summer he wore protective clothing and boots, drank lots of water and was as mindful and careful as I hoped he'd be. 

Next up: Filling it in. 

Pond re-design: Back to the beginning

Once the Upper Pool was turned into a gravel garden, Mark could seriously begin work on deconstructing the big pond. It was a complex project that was made easier by the fact that Mark designed the pond himself and was an integral part of the construction team. Here is a brief description of how the pond was built, which will make it easier to understand how Mark took it apart this summer. 

. . . 

Mark did numerous drawings for himself and also to explain to me how everything would work when we originally built the pond. The first two images picture the slope behind the pond with the rocks, pond wall and "shelves" for water plants. (Double click to enlarge images).

This is the view from above with the pond wall, boulders, the shallow pebble beach (at the bottom of the drawing) and the shelves where we set potted water plants like lilies. 

In order for the John Deere trackhoe to make it into the back garden, Mark took down a 40-year-old Arborvitae tree. Its matching partner is still growing at the other end of our house. This was a huge project in itself and much more work than I think Mark anticipated. 

The equipment just fit between our house and our neighbor's fence to the left. 

Here we are at the end of the first day standing in the rough hole which will become the pond. We were so freaked at the mess and so nervous about the whole project we went out to dinner so we didn't have to look at this view. I told Mark if we decided we'd made a big mistake, it was only a hole in the ground and we could always fill it back up. Obviously that's exactly what we're doing — 24 years later!

Large boulders have been set on the hill and the retaining wall has been started. The cement blocks are being used to built the pond retaining wall. The big pile of them are at the foot of what will be the stream to the upper pool. The wheelbarrow is standing on the first "shelf" layer. 

It was a very rainy summer which kept putting us behind schedule waiting for the pond to dry out. 

We sodded the hills to control erosion during the rainstorms and put down wood chips on the path between them. At this point, the pond has been lined with two different colors of old carpet to protect the rubber liner from being punctured by tree roots. 

The pond was double-lined with EPDM roofing rubber. Mark talked to an engineer at the production company to be sure it was fish safe. The roll of rubber weighed over 500 pounds and took 14 friends, relatives and neighbors to lift it and spread it in place. 

Setting the big rocks inside the pond.

An early photo of the finished pond and early plantings. 

A view from a year or two ago before I started replanting the hills with native Carex pennsylvanica to replace the weedy dying grass that had been shaded out over the years. 

We eventually gave up on having fish as they drew raccoons to the pond and the raccoons, in turn, tended to mess with the potted water plants. 

The real losers in our redesign project are Fred and Ethel. They — or their progeny — have come to the pond every spring since 1998. They usually were gone by the 4th of July, but they were an annual treat for us. We loved their antics in and out of the water. When they arrived on March 21st this year, we told them about our plans, but I don't think they believed we were serious.

We're very happy with our big change in the garden, but we will miss this duo. 

Pond re-design: The Upper Pool

The first step that Mark undertook in his big pond re-design project was the Upper Pool. This is where the recirculated water whooshed out between the rocks, overflowing between the stepping stones to travel down the stream into the big pond. (Double click the pictures to see the images larger).

. . .

2010: I was not allowed to plant in this area until Mark built the Tea House which is adjacent to it; a 10-year project in itself. Clearly this photo is from the earliest planting scheme which involved a lovely Amelanchier tree that died. 

2015: Five years later and things are coming along. The weeping Serbian spruce tree blocks your view down the stream into the big pond. 

2018: By this time the Upper Pool is almost completely hidden by the native water plant, Sagitaria latifolia. This view clearly shows the stepping stone path between the Upper Pool on the right and the stream on the left. 

APRIL 2021: Mark began actual work on the Upper Pool as soon as it was possible in the spring. He thought of the Upper Pool as his test project to see how this whole concept of a dry gravel garden would work. It meant taking the pond plumbing apart up here and pulling out the rubber liner. Doing that, however, also meant that we had made the pond system inoperable. There was no going back from this step.

Mark's using a sump pump and a commercial strainer to get all the  water out of the pool and the wet organic debris that was at its bottom. He piled the debris in the strainer to let as much water drain off as possible. 

I then emptied them into a wheelbarrow and he dumped the goop in any available bare spot in the garden to dry it out more. Eventually we took it to the Badger Road drop-off for garden waste. 

Once the pool was empty and dry, he pulled out any rocks he wanted to rearrange.

Next the hole was filled with soil. Notice how he was moving a wheelbarrow across piece of plywood on top of the steeping stones in order to dump the dirt where he wanted it. A more treacherous system than I was comfortable with, but he didn't have any accidents. 

We had initially thought we could hire a landscape firm to do this project, but the ones we called weren't interested. It didn't take Mark long to realize he was constantly making decisions that only he could make. It was not easy, but it made sense to do everything by himself that he was able to do. Here he's reshaping the edge and rearranging the rock placements. 

MAY: Mark drove up to Michel's Waterloo Quarry and brought back a pickup truck load of quartzite chips for the top layer of the Upper Pool. 

JUNE: We continued to play around with rock placement up here as work on the big pond began. You can see that the gravel does not go beyond the edge of the pool at this point in the process. 

August: As work on the big pond drew to its conclusion, Mark topped up the Upper Pool with more quartzite chips. Here you can also see that the gravel is now in the stream bed on the other side of the stepping stones as well. 

SEPTEMBER: The view in the other direction, standing on the stepping stones. 

I know a lot of gardening friends were shocked when we told them what we were planning to do. We were both thrilled with the result of this first big step. The garden feels new and different, which is not easy to accomplish when you have been in the same place for almost 30 years.

The gravel lightens the look and physically opens this area compared to when it was full of water plants. It is the perfect contrast to the highly planted area that surrounds it. 

Pond re-design update: Our new water feature

When you embark on a major garden re-design, you suddenly discover all sorts of areas that need smaller changes to accommodate the big garden changes. For many years, this area on the east side of our property was a moss garden. It was created when we put the pond in in 1997/98 and I wasn't allowed to plant anywhere else in the garden as it was almost entirely a construction site. So here I sat, pulling out grass to reveal the moss hidden underneath it. Fast forward 20 years to the realization that this was a labor intensive little spot, given our whole property was now under cultivation. 

When we had the boulder wall, stone steps and paver driveway done in 2015, I needed to quickly find a big holding area for all the plants that lined the driveway. If I wanted to keep them, everything for two feet deep along the drive had to be dug up and put in temporary homes. Using the moss garden to solve this problem made it easier to say goodbye to that early garden. 

Once all those plants had been put back along our redesigned front drive, we decided to take advantage of this now empty spot. We moved the bench that had been on our deck out under the old apple tree and created a path that directed you to it off the main gravel path.  

For the first time, we had a spot to sit and view the garden down the length of the pond to the Tea House. Until this moment, we'd always sat on the bench on the deck and looked across the width of the pond to the hills behind it. 

Once we decided to leave this new seating area, I began to plant Yew (Taxus) shrubs that I planned to eventually prune into globes. 

I planted Maidenhair ferns and Hakonechloa macra grass, intending to fill the space between the shrubs with those two plants. 

Eventually I gave up on the Japanese forest grass as the rabbits would not leave it alone. I concentrated on the ferns and added two tiny Acer pseudosieboldianum (Korean maple) trees. I didn't get very far with this replanting plan last summer, when all the debris we discovered buried under our old deck was shifted over here.  

All of that broken concrete was put in the bottom of the empty pond this summer as Mark progressed on his big project. This unplanted area turned out to be the perfect location for our new water feature: The metal endcap of a tanker truck that is 39" in diameter. It has a valve on the bottom to release water when we want to clean it out. 

I've planted Carexes, Hellebores and Geranium phaeums around it. After I did that, I discovered why bird baths are raised off the ground: Birds kept trying to land on the ferns and all the plants. I'm waiting to see if the plants can solidly fill in to a degree that will keep the critters off of them. 

We are both thrilled with this new water feature that was found for us by a friend who is a retired metalworker. 

On a recent visit to Olbrich Botanic Gardens, we discovered they are trying to keep all their garden debris on site. They are finding all kinds of visible, often decorative, uses for logs and tree branches. We decided we would do the same with one of the logs we had from last year's tree removals. 

While the birds initially drank from the tank edges, the addition of tree branches extending into the water resulted in an explosion of avian visitors. Sometimes it looked like they were lined up on a runway waiting their turn to taxi down to the water.

We needn't have worried that removing our 7,000-gallon pond would result in a loss of birds and wildlife in the garden. 

Pond re-design: Why we did it

We moved to this property in 1994 specifically to create an ornamental garden. We spent the first two and a half years planning and designing the pond, which was going to be the centerpiece of the space. We belonged to a local pond group so we got to see a lot of water features in home gardens. That helped us decide what we did and did not want in ours.

Specifically we wanted a stream with multiple waterfalls to act as a natural filtration system. 

Eventually the pond was well-covered with waterlilies whose leaves kept the water cool; another method of keeping algae at bay. 

Though the pond was in the sunniest spot in the garden — to make sure the lilies got enough sun to bloom — it was surrounded by trees which created a maintenance nightmare.

With three large Locust trees, it was impossible to keep the leaves from falling into the pond each fall. That meant that ideally we needed to empty the pond and clean it out each spring. (Look for the rocks marking the edge of the pond; the leaves make it blend into the grass and the deck.)

Mark, with very little help from me, did that messy job for years. It was easy in the early days when he was younger and when there were multiple unplanted areas where we could spread out the muck and let it compost. Along with cleaning out the rotting debris, he divided the water lilies, repotted and repositioned them back in the pond.

The last bare spot was the former moss garden where Mark dumped the slimy debris a few month before I began to redesign and plant this area in 2017. 

That was the last time he seriously cleaned out the pond. He never was able to do this job without help and we found it almost impossible to hire a company to do the kind of job we needed done — with the care we always use when working in the garden. 

During our COVID summer at home, the pond started having more problems than not being cleaned out. It sprang three leaks. Mark managed to find and repair two of them. But the third one was the problem. It was likely located in the rubber liner somewhere under the rocks in the stream; a location which meant it would never be able to be found and fixed. We had to turn off the pond pump because of the leak, which made the water eutrophy. 

We knew it was time for a change; a big change. All winter long we talked about what we might do; we looked at most of the garden books we own for inspiration and information. It didn't take long before we agreed to turn our wet pond into a symbolic water feature; something Mark had been interested in from the day we moved here. 

In those early day of creating our garden, I was less enthused about having a traditional raked gravel garden like Ryoanji (below). Over the years, I have come to appreciate this classic style of Japanese garden and was excited to make the change.  

Our new gravel garden has one major difference from the traditional Japanese style garden. We followed Olbrich Botanical Gardens' directions on creating sustainable gravel gardens like they've done with the one illustrated below. Thus, someday we can plant directly into our gravel garden should we, or the next owners of our house, decide to do so. (More on that in the upcoming posts about making the change-over.)

OLBRICH BOTANICAL GARDENS PHOTO

IVOM: Tea House display

After four months, our pond project is done. On Sunday, we hosted an Open Garden for friends to see the Zen face-lift we've given the pond. This is the arrangement we created for the Tea House.