There's a difficult area in my garden that rarely features in photos. It's a strip of land on the north side of my driveway that measures about 7 feet wide by a 25 feet long. It slopes pretty dramatically in two directions, both down to the street and down onto my driveway. And the soil is awful--clay over hardpan. It's really difficult to know how much water this area receives. On one hand, it usually seems dry which is consistent with shallow soil. On the other hand, there's a lot of groundwater making its way down the slope and I have a feeling that this water (which derives both from rainfall and from springs in the area) percolates down to the hardpan and then sheets across it. So, shallow-rooted plants might experience summer-dry conditions while deeper rooted plants might (for better or worse) find their roots dipping into flowing groundwater year-round. All this is just a guess, though. To know what is really happening I think I'd have to dig down to the hardpan layer many times during the growing season just to look at and to feel the soil for moisture. I've had good intentions, but I've not done this. Yet.
When we purchased the house, the slope was covered with ancient junipers. A sea of woody and overgrown juniper is not my favorite look. It was so uninspiring, in fact, that I don't have a single picture of this area as it was when we moved in. No one needs help visualizing a hillside covered with juniper, right? If you do, here's a photo of the hillside behind our house:
 |
| Our back yard, 2007 |
After clearing out the juniper and amending the soil generously, I planted a mixture of grasses (Calamagrostis x acutiflora "Karl Foerster" and Nassella tenuissima), bearded iris, and a couple of small vine maples (Acer circinatum). The planting scheme was consistent with what I was trying to achieve at the time, which was distinct clumps and drifts of unfussy, prairie-style plants. I also wanted the plantings to evoke a dry environment. It looked like this:
 |
| North side of the driveway--May, 2010 |
How sad and empty that newly planted area looks! I tried to wait patiently for it to grow up and fill in. In April, 2013, it still looked like this:
 |
| Driveway Bed, April, 2013 |
The Iris were a highlight and yielded many nice photo opportunities (when I cropped out all the more unfortunate parts of the scene.)
 |
| Iris in Driveway Bed, 2013 |
The "Karl Foerster" feather reed grasses grew substantially and the Nassella filled in a little bit, but the poor vine maple was not making any headway at all. Since the area was first planted, I'd added a few new plants including Rubus pentalobus and several varieties of dwarf shasta daisies. But the area remained an eyesore. It was not as full and lush as I wanted it to be and and did not coordinate well with the gardens on the other side of the property. So, late last year I tore it all apart and remixed it. I replaced the unhappy vine maple with a cut leaf sumac--I know that they live in areas with shallow soil, so I hoped that it would have the opportunity to make the best use of the shallow soil in this area AND be able to choose whether or not to send its roots down to the groundwater that I think flows just on top of the hardpan. I moved all the plants around to try and achieve a more "meadowy" look. Finally, in an effort to integrate the appearance of the two sides of the garden, I've added some additional plants: Gaura, a couple of calico asters (Aster laterifolius "Prince"), hardy geranium (Geranium macrorrhizum "Ingwersen's Variety"), and a Japanese anemone. So now it looks like this:
 |
| Driveway Bed, late-August, 2014. |
 |
| New additions -- calico aster and Gaura |
 |
| Cut leaf sumac among grasses--"Karl Foerster" behind and Nassella in the foreground. |
And that is how it looks today. I'll give it another year to see if it will grow together and achieve the look that I have in my mind's eye. I'll commit fully to the Nassella as a matrix plant and buy a couple more to fill the existing gaps. And I'll do my absolute best with care and pruning of the Nassella--always a challenge. If next spring/summer rolls around and I'm still singing this same song...well, I guess another garden remodel will be in my future.
7 comments:
It's so frustrating when the reality doesn't match what we see in our vision, or when plants don't thrive. That poor vine maple, it looks like it definitely did not like it there, it actually looks smaller in the later photos. I like the sumac, but I've never planted it for fear of it spreading too much. I think the area looks quite lush and lovely now.
Thanks, Alison. I guess I wasn't totally honest about the vine maple...there were two...and then there was one...
We all have those problem areas - in fact, my own garden is rife with them. I have similar problems with sloped ground and hard-pan and I continue to adjust my plant selections, while also supplementing my soil (including hauling in additional top-soil to create berms), but it remains an experiment in process. I just replanted one area myself, which will show up in a post soon (probably tomorrow). I've had good luck with the Stipa/Nassella tenuissima, even if it's considered a weed here, but keeping it groomed is a challenge. Good luck with your changes! I'll be interested to see what happens.
Hi Kris! I took your nassella grooming advice to mind but my result was not as good as yours. You must have the patience of a saint to get out all the dead bits!
On the bright side, the current view looks so much better than a bunch of junipers and fuller than it did when you first planted it. It will knit together in another season and I'll bet, with a couple of additions, you'll love it.
OG--Thanks for the encouragement. Still, I consider it a personal failing when my work doesn't live up to my expectations. :-( The best year will always be next year, huh?
I bet it's nice to see those iris when you pull in the driveway. I think you're going in the right direction interspersing grasses with other plants. Grasses seem to just love difficult places.
Post a Comment