Good morning! Deacon (the naughty black lab in Tiger Way Gardens) says hello! He is standing on his now completed dog ramp, that could someday double as a wheelchair ramp. This ramp has been a lifesaver for Deacon's buddy AJ. AJ has hip problems and cannot climb steps all that well. The dog ramp also doubles as a runway for the dogs to come straight out of their room into their dog pen; which, true to form; has nothing in it for the dogs to destroy like they did in my other garden. It is a simple 50' x 50 dog pen. Although, the naughty lab has managed to pull his wool blanket out into the dog pen so he can tear it apart. Let me tell you, labs can be very destructive and I had no clue when I first got mine!
This is another view of the dog ramp looking toward the house. The dog ramp wound up being 30 feet long, 4 feet wide and the slope rises about 30". It is a pretty easy ramp to traverse and Mr. Fix-it and I built it well and to last. The ramp forms the northern boundary of our soon to be patio area. I have a lot of old bricks that I have salvaged. They will be laid down on the gravel area as soon as I am able to. To the left of the patio area is the new koi pond-now nearly complete. I just need to finish the landscaping and camouflaging the waterfall area.
Here is a big picture of the pond looking toward the dog pen. You can see Deacon and AJ sorrowfully looking at me because they no longer have free run of the yard. I was using the wireless collars to keep them contained around the house and I strongly recommend these collars. My labs were kept inbounds and even when I try to get Deacon to go out of bounds when we go for walks he refuses to budge from his imaginary boundary. Those collars work great! The bad thing about the dogs free roaming was they had access to the pond, the house, and patio furniture and all sorts of things they could get into. Deacon decided to shred one of my patio chair cushions one day when he felt he was not getting enough attention. I feel much better with the dogs in the pen now. They can safely bark at all the wildlife that surrounds our home. And those dogs can pick up scents really well! Of course, when the coyotes start howling just after dusk there is no scent needed. The dogs return the howls.
Along one side of the pond I planted a bunch of mondo grass as a groundcover under some azaleas and next to the pond. I am hoping the mondo grass will fill in and make a nice groundcover that is easy to care for. The mondo grass also compliments the pond. I had purchased three pots of mondo grass when I visited the McCorkles Giant Plant Sale with my friend Skeeter this past fall. The results above are from dividing just two pots. What a buy!
I hope to begin moving the koi from my other pond soon. I have read where dormancy is a pretty good time to move koi. In fact, I was able to catch one quite easily without even really trying. If I had a bucket it would've made the journey. The pond is 40" deep and there are three plant shelves in it. The plant shelves are fairly deep too. I am hoping that the depth of the pond and the fact the pond is quite close to the house will help to keep the koi safe from night time marauders. I also plan to use some fishing line to dissuade the blue herons from feasting here during the day. Hopefully it all works out.
I hope everyone's year is off to a great start! I am still moving gardens and household items and all sorts of things. I am sad I am running out of time and I have to make a choice between garden plants and household items because I can't do both. I still need to move some rather large doublefile viburnums, edgeworthia, hellebores, daffodils, and maybe a few other shrubs. This task is best done during the winter and as we all know spring will be here soon. Now back to patio building....
in the garden....
Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden
I live in Tennessee and for those of you who do not live
in Tennessee you may or may not be aware that Tennessee is notorious for
ticks. Ticks are a part of the landscape here and something every
Tennessean needs to understand and be aware of. My husband and I are no
strangers to ticks, but when we began working our land we realized that
we really had no idea what kind of damage ticks could do to a person. We
were used to an occasional tick hopping a ride when we ventured outside
in Tiger Gardens. We would have maybe 3-7 bites per season from ticks. A tick here and there I can certainly deal with, but
on our land there are literally millions of ticks vying for a
piece of whatever warm blooded animal happens by. The ticks have
actually swarmed us. I have had a season's bites from ticks already just in the past month! There were at least 15 seed ticks biting each ankle this past weekend-even with preventative measures like boots, socks, deep woods bug spray and checking periodically. It was awful!
There are also many types of ticks in Tennessee. They range from
tiny seed ticks to large Lone Star Ticks and then some. We primarily have a problem with seed ticks and Lone Star ticks on our land. It is a scary thing to find
them all over your body or all over that of your 16 month old
granddaughter; which recently happened. We needed take action.
Ticks have their place I am sure
but on my body that is not their place. Since it is nigh on
impossible to control them or remove them fast enough we decided we
would treat our property and build a safe haven for us to take breaks
upon without fear of ticks-that was the thought anyhow. Reality is sometimes different.
The solution was a gravel patio with patio blocks. We have also treated the area around this patio for ticks using a tick control. I have never ever used tick control anywhere on my property or my garden but I really had no choice here in this area. The ticks are just too bad. Despite treating the area and making the patio ticks are still finding their way onto us while we work the land. At any rate we can see them better when on this patio so I will share with you my new patio.
I started with 2.75 tons of 1/2" gravel. Ever wonder what 5500 pounds of gravel looks like? Just look at the above picture. My poor trailer was not happy with all the weight. And downloading it in 80 degree temperature was not so fun for me either.
Before I even purchased the gravel though I had to convince Mr. Fix-it to scrape out an area for the gravel and patio to go. One might think it is easy to select a location for a patio on nearly 60 acres but it is not! My criteria for the location was that it: had to be convenient, had to have some shade, and needed to be out of the way of the house build when that process begins next year. And oh yes, a view would be nice too.
The location I chose is on the west side of a copse of trees that surrounds a tiny pond. this area is on the back of our field and will actually be outside of the house boundaries and yard boundaries. I am positive no septic, electric, or geothermal lines will interfere with this location because I want to save the trees.
I purchased heavy duty landscape fabric and put it in the 10'x12' area that Mr. Fix-it had prepared for me. Next came the backbreaking work of downloading all of the gravel. When I purchased it the folks at the quarry said one ton of gravel will fill approximately a 10'x10' area to 2" deep. My area was 10'x12' and I anticipated filling it to about 6" deep so I purchased as much gravel as I thought I could safely haul on my trailer. It turns out I had more than enough gravel in my 2.75 tons to not only fill up my excavation 6" deep but I actually wound up filling it 8-10" deep, filled in the cracks between the blocks and had some leftover to fill in a pot hole on our dirt driveway!
I had some existing 16"x16" concrete blocks I had removed from Tiger Gardens. I have decided to take everything I can when we move-plants, hardscaping, etc. I am working on this process a little at a time but I have to be careful not to leave anything on the farm that if it walked away I would be very sad to lose. At first I thought I would put these blocks in buttressed up against one another but then decided to leave a few inches of gap between the blocks for water drainage and for looks. You can see the patio in progress in the above picture. I packed more 1/2" gravel in the gaps and I tell you the patio is solid and sturdy. I learned this trick of using only gravel in a patio when I built my broken concrete patio.
The patio was finished in one week-actually three days of working on it. We are now in the process of building a frame around it to make a shelter of sorts so we'll be out of the sun, wind, and insects. I'll showcase it later but for now this is the patio-the supposed to be tick free patio home base.
What else have Mr. Fix-it and I been doing on the land? Well, in addition to removing some of the 10,000 daffodil bulbs from Tiger Gardens One I have been trying in vain to get the bulbs planted in Tiger Way (our new place). So far I have managed to plant approximately 4000 daffodil bulbs of about dozen different cultivars (Tete e Tete, Geranium, Rip Van Winkle, Tripartite, King Alfred, Cheerfulness, Thalia, Ice Wings, Hawera, Sun Disc, Minnow, and more I have yet to identify). It is such an easy job digging up the bulbs because you can in one shovelful dig up a dozen bulbs. You, unfortunately cannot or should not plant that many bulbs when you replant. I have divided all of my bulbs and I tell you it is turning out to be a BIG job. I still have literally thousands of bulbs to plant that are already dug and I am fast running out of time since the daffodils will soon go dormant. I don't think all of the daffodils will be moving this year or even next. That fact is the first reality check for me in this impending garden move.
Ever wonder what 600 newly planted 'Sun Disc' bulbs look like? You can barely see the foliage but it is there and standing up nicely thanks to all of the rains we've received recently. 'Sun Disc' is a Jonquil type daffodil that is a miniature bulb. It blooms late in the season and has actually begun blooming since I took this picture! This is the area to the right of the new patio. On the left of the new patio is about 500 'Minnow' daffodils bulbs. They will all bloom together and the patio should have a good view of the show. Plus, since this whole area is outside of our fence area I think the deer will be disappointed with the plant choice of daffodils, but I will be a happy gardener knowing that planting daffodils where deer and ticks roam is a good thing....
in the garden...
Garden tour season is upon us and I have a special one coming up soon! Stay tuned for a story about our very own Tennessee Dixter.
Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden
What is that way in the distance? Could it be a chaise just waiting for a tired gardener to have a seat? Let's take a closer look. Come walk with me.
As we get closer we can surely see it is indeed a chaise with a few chairs, a lovely table and umbrella and a patio! The patio is tucked into two gardens. Shall I talk about the gardens as we walk? The first garden we come upon is surrounded by rocks lovingly collected by me in Louisville Kentucky from my daughter's subdivision. Boy was that a lot of work~! I need a seat just thinking about it. The Redbud Garden is so named due to the 'Forest Pansy' redbud tree growing in this garden. A funny story about how this garden started. I had an extra load of dirt and no where to put it. This particular area was a difficult area because the grass would not grow here no matter what I did. So, I dropped the dirt in this location and planted the Forest Pansy. The rocks and other perennials came later. Tip: start your gardens with the structure-trees and/or shrubs then fill in with perennials.
Ah, here we go. We can get a close up look at the broken concrete. The iris foliage you see to the right of this small patio is from the irises growing in the Redbud Garden. We shall walk to the left of this patio in a minute and take a look at the Walled Garden. If you have a chance do go back and look at this post on the Walled Garden. It shows the garden NEWLY planted. My, what a change. I will talk more of the changes as we walk around the gardens and patio.
The particular location we are standing in is on the north side of my front yard. It has a great view to the side gardens and backyard. The 10' x 8' patio area is somewhat sloped to the north. As such I had to elevate one side of the patio. Mr. Fix-it and I did this by applying a layer of gravel ranging in depth from 2-6". Under this gravel we applied landscape fabric to prevent weeds from growing. I won't go into detail about building this wonderful patio (because I have already posted on that part) but just let me say it has exceeded my expectations. When we first placed the concrete on the gravel surface the cracks and gaps were so big I was afraid my footing would be shaky when walking on the patio. Not so! After packing in the crushed limestone this patio is as solid as they get. It has worked out wonderfully.
And here we are just waiting to take a seat! That chaise sure looks comfy. My two tulip chairs now have a permanent home out front and don't need to rest on my lawn anymore. A nice thing. Okay, let's move around the Walled Garden now. We will walk to the left (north) and I will talk of the plantings along the way.
This area is sloping to the left (toward the north) of my property. I wanted to level this area and keep soil from washing away so I acquired some old concrete blocks that are made to look natural from a fellow Freecycler in Evansville Indiana. On these I placed flat concrete stones as a cover. My cat Orkin loves walking on this wall. The wall serves to delineate the boundary of the garden and holds in some backfilled soil. Not only that but I think the wall helps to hold in moisture. This is most important because there is a mature oak and mature cedar tree growing in this bed. The soil can be very dry. The outer rim of shrubs is a group of PeeGee Hydrangeas I propagated from cuttings in the year 2007. I hate propagating shrubs. It takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r for them to mature to good sized shrubs. Soon these shrubs will be in full bloom. The first time since I planted them! There are about 10-12 of these shrubs. A tip: when you have a seating area it feels more comfortable and natural to have a backing in place. In my case my backing is actually three walls of shrubs (two rows of the PGs, and in between them directly in the middle of this garden are three 'Nova Zembla' rhododendrons; which are evergreen shrubs. This garden is dark and barely gets any sun so only shade tolerant plants can grow in this location. There are a few perennials in this garden as well. Namely hostas and columbine but they will soon come out so the shrubs can take over and provide the structure and impact I desire.The hypertufa pots are not normally located on this wall. They have been relocated there temporarily while we have some work done on the house.
Okay, we have now reached the lower end (northern side) of the Walled Garden. This picture shows the PG hydrangeas a lot better. They are getting big-finally! Even though I started this garden in 2007 the PGs (big ones) were actually started from cuttings in 2005. Looking straight ahead past this garden we can see parts of the Northside Shrub Border and the Roadside Shrub border. Directly straight ahead on the other side of the shrubs is the road. Let's look at a focal point in this garden. A special treat in the form of a Japanese maple.
This is one of six Japanese maples in the front yard. Most are planted as an understory interest tree. All are under existing mature trees. The shade tends to slow the growth a bit but I think in the long run it will be okay because with slower growth the tree will hopefully put on a good structure and grow nice roots. This tree started as a 2-3' tall seedling. I do not know the cultivar. Last winter it had the most glorious orange fall foliage. It is simply splendid. I tucked it in between two PGs. The hosta growing here will soon be divided and moved. It is a 'Christmas Tree' hosta. I have found this hosta to be one of the very best hostas in my garden. It gets nice and large and looks good all season. It does not tend to fade away like a good many hostas do here in the south.
We are rounding the bend of the U shaped Walled Garden and are now looking up toward the house from the northeast corner of my front yard. You can just make out a 'Nova Zembla' rhododendron between the two PG hydrangeas that are in the foreground. If you look past the rhododendron you'll then see the back side of the new Broken Concrete Patio.
Let's look back to where we just came from in order to round the bend shall we? On the right we can see the Northside Shrub Border. This border follows the outline of the Walled Garden and there is a bump out between the Walled Garden and the Crabapple Garden. I planted an 'Empress of China' evergreen dogwood in that bumpout just this past fall. It is doing wonderfully. Trees and shrubs are my passion here but I am really running out of spots to plant them.
Looking to the south we can now make out the mature cedar tree (Juniperus virginiana). I love my cedar trees for their toughness and food they provide to wildlife. Unfortunately they are very dark underneath. The only thing growing in this area are some Solomon's Seal and a few azaleas. Generally speaking all of my gardens are loaded down with perennials. You usually cannot see the ground because of all the plants. Some areas like this one though are too challenging even for tough perennials. It is here that I prefer only shrubs with a good ground cover under the shrubs. This area is inhospitable to most plants due to the tree roots from the red cedar. Oak tree roots are not as bad as cedar tree roots and I have a lot of oak trees. Tulip poplars and even river birches have very thirsty and very hungry roots that simply clog up the ground and hog all of the soil. No matter what kind of trees you have in your garden just know the ground is normally very tough for perennials to grow in because the perennials simply cannot out compete the trees. In these situations only tough shrubs and mulch will work. As a rule I generally do not water. At least I try not to. If you are a gardener who waters a lot you may have better luck trying to keep perennials alive under mature trees. Good luck.
Looking through to the patio we can see the three rhododendrons. On the other side of the rhodies are more PG hydrangeas. They are smaller than the ones I previously showed since they were only propagated a few years ago and just planted last fall. To the left and where you can see the green water fountain is the start of the Redbud Garden. The Redbud Garden gets a bit more sun and has several perennials growing in it under the redbud.
Just past the water fountain is where the concrete wall will turn to stone and that signifies we are almost back to where we started-at the Redbud Garden. Here you can see several perennials growing in this garden. This garden is viewed prominently from my front porch as you can see in the above picture.
Looking through the gardens we can see not only the patio (remember it is tucked in between these two gardens) but also some of the foundation beds and back toward the Northside Shrub Border and backyard.This is our view looking to the west from our new Broken Concrete Patio.
Finally we are back to where we started the tour and walk around. This large island bed is one of five large island beds in the front yard. So far we have walked around the Front Center Garden and now this combination Walled/Redbud Garden. Soon we'll see the Crabapple Garden, the Mahonia Garden, and the Front Sidewalk Garden.
Shall we have a seat and a spot of lemonade on the patio....
in the garden....
Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden
I
t is done-it's finally finished! And how I love my new broken concrete patio. The idea of building a patio from broken concrete was a good one-I thought anyhow. The only cost would be for the gravel and metal edging. Concrete is durable and easily found if you know where to look. I just knew I had a good idea to build this patio out of broken concrete until...
We started the patio a bit differently than we normally would. I decided to lay out the landscape fabric first then add the gravel. I did not plan to add any sand to the base of this patio. I theorized the gravel would allow me to level the chunks of concrete and the sand would just wash away anyhow. Normally I would put the gravel down, then the landscape fabric then about two inches of sand. Not with this patio. All was well until....
We (Mr. Fix-it and I) began placing the huge chunks of concrete in their places. The right side of this patio is higher than the left so we had to compensate for the grade change. We did this by building up the lower side with more gravel and by using the thicker pieces of concrete on that side. By the way, we drove to Evansville Indiana for these chunks of concrete. Mr. Fix-it and I loaded his truck-in the pouring rain. What a mess! I think it was worth it though. The concrete came from a man who broke it up and replaced it with flagstone. Funny enough you can see this concrete once started life as a broken concrete patio too-but the person added in mortar to hold the pieces together; whereas we only added gravel.
When we first laid out all of these chunks of concrete I was quite skeptical. I thought the idea of a broken concrete patio was not going to work. The concrete did not fit together well at all and the gaps between the chunks were dangerous. One could easily break an ankle if one was not careful. The patio sat without a gravel filling or edging for about a month and it was not used at all. Finally, I had enough time to insert the metal edging ($15) along the outside of the patio (the back and sides are held in by limestone blocks) in order to level the patio and hold in the gravel. I then added two and one half wheelbarrows of crushed limestone. The crushed limestone worked like a charm to make a sturdy and firm footing for the concrete chunks! Due to the wide range of sizes of the grave the gravel packed into the cracks and gaps wonderfully and the patio became a real work of art. A work of art that was very sturdy with no fear of breaking one's ankle in the cracks. I'd say it is even strong enough to hold a chair leg in the cracks that is how well the crushed limestone packed down. I was so happy it worked out well and I did not have to start from square one again. The broken concrete of the patio base ties in with my other beds out front where I use broken concrete as garden edging and is a simple natural way to reuse what otherwise would be bound for the landfill. The broken concrete serves a purpose and looks good to boot. I find I am now spending a lot of time in the chaise out front....
in the garden....
Come back Friday to see how this patio is tucked into a large island bed garden.
Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden
I have been extremely fortunate to be the recipient of many wonderful things for the garden. Last September I posted about Eric and the nearly 400 bricks he kindly gave to me. He was doing a landscaping job for a client and she did not want bricks edging her garden (what was she thinking??), anyhow he gave them to me via Freecycle. I have always wanted a brick patio, but was not entirely sure I could make it work with just 400 bricks, and was not prepared to buy more. I also had no idea where I would put the patio, but knew it should be near Mr. Fix-it's garage since it was to be a gift a for him. After letting the bricks sit on a pallet all winter I have finally chosen the spot, a perfect spot not far from the pool and close enough to a garden and the garage so as to be accessible, yet secret and cozy and private.
Once I chose the spot (next to a wide raised bed with two oak trees and an Eastern Red Cedar growing in it) I dry laid all of the bricks on the grass to make sure my plan would work. This is not as easy as it sounds. While bricks by themselves are rather easy to work with, try laying out 400. Not an easy thing to do. The really bad part was I then had to move them all. Thankfully the Jimster came home from school and took over for me. My body still aches! The rocks show the outline of the new 'Secret Patio Garden'. More on that later.
Now that the bricks were all moved, excavation could start. The area had a very slight slope to it so I had to compensate for this by digging deeper on the upper area of the patio spot. All of the excavated soil and sod was turned over into the garden area surrounding my new patio. What I did was actually turn over the soil in the garden area, then dig the patio area and place that excavated soil on top of the turned soil. This created a raised bed equal to the existing raised bed. I had plenty of rocks to line the new beds around the patio. I had planned for two entries onto the patio. These two entries were diagonally
across from one another with easy access from Mr. Fix-it's garage and the swimming pool. Excavating the site to a good 8" deep on the high side and about 6" on the low side while building the new gardens took about 3 days. Phew!
The next step was to get the #8 drainage fill from a local trucking company. One ton of this fill is enough to do a 10'x 10' square area 4" deep. I knew one ton would be more than enough since my patio was a 10' circle, and not a square. The extra was placed under the roof overhang on Mr. Fix-it's garage. Thank goodness Mr. Fix-it downloaded the gravel for me. He made it all look so darn easy!! I made sure the gravel was fairly level and packed tightly before moving on to the next step. You can see we were working in the dark trying to get the job completed.
The next step involved another trip to town to get 1 ton of sand to cover the gravel to a depth of about 2-3". One ton more than did the job, but I made sure I kept the extra to apply to the top of the bricks after they were laid and to fill in low spots as I laid the bricks. However, before I applied the sand I laid a good quality landscape fabric on top of the gravel. I prefer this separation between the sand and gravel and have had good results in the past. I always overlap the landscape fabric and leave plenty of extra around the patio. I started down the middle of the patio by laying one complete row of bricks. This would be the baseline. It is vital to get it perfectly level.
Once the sand was spread and leveled it was time to lay the bricks. Initially I had desired a circular pattern for the bricks, but there was no way I was going to chip every single brick. Economically and realistically using a basket weave design made much more sense to me, and it was the design I had dry laid earlier. I love the basket weave design and tend to use only that pattern when laying pavers or bricks. It is simple, attractive and quite functional. 
I used both a level and a small 2x4 to ensure the sand was level and packed down. I also checked my brick level ensuring I had about 1/4 of drop per foot in order to allow for drainage of standing water. I did not want water puddling in the patio. You cannot even tell the patio is sloped but it sure helps with drainage and is very important. I built my patio away from my home, but if you build one next to your home drainage is vitally important-always drain away from your home.
Finally I swept extra sand into all the grooves and packed it down as best I could. I let the rain do the rest. I find regular sand works fine and packs down really well over time, but many folks and experts recommend polymeric sand; which is a sand that expands when wet. This is a hard sand to find in my area. I know Cameron said she found some in bags at a store in her neck of the woods in North Carolina, but it is nigh on impossible to find it here in my area. If you can find this sand, it would not be a bad idea to use it and I may add it to my patio at some point. With light traffic and proper building techniques I believe I'll be fine with mine the way it is for now.
This entire patio costed me a total of $70; which included $15 for the landscape fabric, $25 for the sand, $8 for a composite edging, and $22 for the gravel. A real steal that required only a bit of labor on my part, and the kindness of strangers who are willing to give away products that would otherwise wind up in the dump.
And now the patio is complete! Don't mind the sand. I am letting the rain wash it down to ensure the bricks are very tightly packed. Now all we have to do is sit back and enjoy-yeah right! Seriously, Mr. Fix-it and I have been enjoying this new sitting area tremendously. It is quite comfortable, small and cozy. We do relax here often.
I'll post on the surrounding garden at some later point. Stay tuned for a very BIG addition to this garden and a fellow blogger's signature plant that is so 'squeaky' it just must go....
in the garden....
Can you guess what kind of plant might squeak? Do try to guess prior to checking out the link if you are of a mind. Another tip is that the plant is also known as pigsqueak. You all have a great weekend.