Garden: The Eco-Lawn Project

Well, I am finally ready to share the results of my lawn renovation project.  This project was long over-due.  We'd installed a new sod lawn back in 2008 and we did a fairly good job, I think.  But it had become compacted and lumpy and it was time for a change.  I'd read about a new method, promoted by Joy Creek Nursery in Scapoose, OR, for preparing the soil and I decided to give it a try. (Info Link) (More information about this method from OregonLive)  To be completely accurate, Joy Creek does not claim ownership of this method, which has been studied and practiced by others, but I associate this method with Joy Creek because that is where I first became aware of it. The Joy Creek method utilizes a gravel mulch which is supposed to break the surface tension of the water allowing it to percolate faster into the lawn surface.  Doing this yields two benefits--1) improved Winter drainage and 2) better water absorption during Summer.  The gravel also contributes to a deeper root run and better drought tolerance.  You can choose to renovate an existing lawn by scalping it and then topping it with gravel and compost, but we chose the more drastic method of excavating the old soil and and rebuilding the lawn base.  In subsequent years, we will mulch lightly with gravel and compost.  Heavy annual mulching  can gradually raise the grade of the lawn, so I opted to amend the soil heavily all at once with the hope that I will need to apply less top-dressing during subsequent years.  I want the surface of the finished lawn to remain even with the surrounding hardscape instead of becoming mounded.

So, here's how the project unfolded:

Back in April--the 19th, to be exact--we pulled the truck into the driveway and began to strip the sod. It is a small space (less than 200 square feet) so it seemed easiest to do this by hand.  Our goal was to remove about 4-5 inches of soil in order to accommodate the new soil preparation.

As you can see, we are pros at this.  Projects like this are why we keep a truck.  We also have a couple of motorcycle loading ramps--they make it a breeze to get the loaded wheelbarrow up into the truck.

Half done!

A couple of hours later, we were about half done.  We finished-up the next day after a few more hours of work.  

The next phase of the project was to install broken concrete as lawn edging.  We went to our local concrete recycler and crawled around in their piles of dumped concrete (or "urbanite") to select the chunks most suitable for our use.  It's not glamorous, but it's free!  We had to make a couple of trips and went to several different locations to find what we needed.  

Installing the broken concrete lawn edging.

I roughly leveled the soil upon which I wanted to install the edging.  Then I compacted it well with a chunk of 4X4 fence post (makes and excellent pounding tool) and a "real" dirt-tamping tool.  I back-filled as needed with quarter-minus crushed rock to level the urbanite.  Since our yard slopes in every direction, it is hard to use a level to check the height and slope.  I used a long 2X4 board balanced across the poured-in-place pavers, the work I'd completed, and pegs that I'd pounded into the ground to represent the finished grade.  I tried to keep the lawn-side of the edging flush with the curved shape of the lawn while creating variety in the shape and width on the garden-side.

Rough fitting the urbanite.  I tried to keep a smooth edge on the lawn side.

Then, I raked the soil smooth and topped it with 2 inches of "quarter-10" crushed rock--that was about a yard and a half of crushed rock.  Quarter-10 is sharp, crushed rock that has been graded using a 1/4 inch screen and then washed free from fines.  You wouldn't want to use gravel containing fines because that would inhibit drainage.  Obtaining the gravel proved to be difficult.  Quarter-10 is common near Scapoose, in the Portland area, but is uncommon in Seattle.  I had to special order the gravel and waited nearly two weeks for delivery.  Since then, a new gravel yard has opened (The Dirt Exchange) and they do stock this product.

Sharp gravel installed and raked out.

Then, 2 inches of compost went in.  This is where the project went sort-of sideways.  I think we wound-up with really poor quality soil.  We went to the place where we normally purchase Cedar Grove compost and paid for for two yards of compost.  But when we looked at the product, it was clear that it wasn't Cedar Grove.  It was very rough and was not fully composted.  But, we'd paid and we couldn't get a refund so we chose, instead, their premium garden blend.  Big mistake.  The soil looked OK at first, but proved to be full...FULL...of big chunks of uncomposted material (including weeds).  Beyond that, it compacted hard as a rock and proved to be of low fertility.  But, we didn't realize any of this as we filled the area with the new soil and meticulously leveled and rolled it. 

Ready for planting.

Late May, now, and we finally got the new grass seeded.  I used "Rough and Ready" eco-lawn mix from Pro Time Lawn Seed that was recommended by Joy Creek.  This seed is a mix of grasses and micro-clover.

The seed really had a hard time getting started.  I attribute the difficulty entirely to the poor soil.  I ended up reseeding and topping the lawn two times with different organic supplements.  But, eventually, it ended up looking like this:

New clover eco-lawn.  It needs a trim!  Clover tends to look lumpy if not trimmed short.

Here is our new eco-lawn.  It still has a few thin spots that will need another application of seed, and it gets mighty lumpy when it needs a trim, but it should stay greener in the Summer with less added water (due to the clover and to the inclusion of the gravel) and dryer in the Winter due to improved percolation and drainage.  

Here's hoping that it lives up to my expectations!

Garden: I Built a Bench etc.

One of the final, unrealized elements of my three-year-old backyard transformation was the construction of a bench to disguise a crawlspace hatch cover that intrudes into the patio area.  A couple of weeks ago, I tackled and completed this final chore.  In my first set of backyard plans, I'd sketched an outdoor kitchen or rolling bar-be-que trolley to serve this need.  But the hatch cover is located directly beneath the bathroom window and, smokiness issues aside, I decided that it might be distressing to use the bathroom in close proximity to the grill and nearly face-to-face with the cook.  You think?!  Anyway, I pfutzed around with several versions of the plan, most of which included a built-in trellis and stowage for a large pot in which to grow a vine to adorn the trellis, before I finally decided that simplest is best and opted to build a simple, moveable bench supplemented with hanging metal trellis panels to obscure the bathroom window.  Here's the final product:

The finished bench. Kindly ignore the obnoxious cushions--that's what you get when you shop at Target, end of season.

And this is what it was like before--not a very fair comparison as this photo was taken a long time ago--before the big patio remodel.  But, what can I say?  I was pretty good at avoiding documentation of a feature I disliked.

Bathroom window and the offending crawlspace hatch cover.

A similar picture, taken today, for comparison. (Yes, I left my hose out.)

The bench is sized to slip over the hatch cover.  The front of the bench is skirted to hide the hatch while the back is open.  The bench is easily removed for access to the crawlspace.  Dimensions of the bench were largely dependent upon those of the hatch, but I'm glad to report that the bench is both comfortable and functional.  Most of the bench (the understructure and the seating surfaces) is made with 2X6 lumber while the skirting is made of 1X4's.  Using the 2X6's for the back supports consumed a little unwanted depth and allowed me to angle the back of the bench.

To disguise the bathroom window and to provide a layer of privacy between the bathroom and the adjacent patio, I bought a couple of 2 X 5 foot Gridwall panels and hung them over the bathroom window.  In a perfect world, I guess, the left-hand edge of the bench would align with the edge of the panel, but I felt that the bench would be too massive if I made it long enough to achieve that and I value the open space near the faucet.  So I decided to celebrate functionality by choosing the most pared-down design.  

To finish up, I drilled holes in some small terra-cotta pots, planted them with trailing plants, and hung them from the Gridwall with S-hooks.  I hope that as the plants mature they will further obscure the views in and out of the bathroom.  Even now, though, I think they contribute a sense of privacy to the bathroom window.

And that's one more project scratched from the to-do list.  Go me!

Garden: A Difficult Area

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.

Garden: Small Changes

I've been making small changes in the garden.  Some big projects still await completion--I am trying hard to avert my eyes and my thoughts from those projects.  And I am trying (very hard) to wait and see how the garden fills in before making any big changes to the planting.  But I've been moving slowly along, working on small projects here and there.  And nature has been moving slowly along as well.  So this is a "bits-and-pieces" post about some of the small developments taking place in my garden.

In the back, I found a dish for the top of the gabion pillar.

Before:

Picture taken last August.  The plastic dish acted as a placeholder for whatever would come next.

After:

New dish on gabion pillar.  I think I'd like to add some sempervivums to fill in around the base.  And I can't wait until the sedums bulk up and obscure the top edge of the gabion.

Just across the path from the gabion pillar, I ripped out all the Columbine.  I liked them--in early spring, I was especially happy to see their cheerful blooms--but they also looked gaudy and that weighed on me increasingly.  So, recently, I ordered seed for A. viridiflora "Chocolate Soldier" and I determined that the existing plants needed to go sooner rather than later.  How am I going to differentiate between the new seedlings and the (probably) hundred thousand seeds from the existing plants?  Really...that's not a rhetorical question.

Newly (temporarily) columbine-free area.

On the other side of the patio, the bulky plants in the arbor bed are getting some size and are doing what I hoped they'd do--providing a feeling of enclosure.  I've been thinking about, maybe, adding some Primula japonica (the dark raspberry-colored ones) to the area around the front--it might look nice if they infiltrated the spaces between the cement strips.

The persicaria is a good 7 feet tall right now.  Yea!

Further 'round the back, in the "Swamp Bed", the siberian iris are getting ready to bloom.  I planted them last year and they didn't bloom, so this is my first chance to see if I like the combination of chartreuse iris with the chartreuse-y Alchemilla blooms.  I've also planted fennel (plain old Foeniculum vulgare and bronze fennel) which should bloom alongside the Alchemilla later in the year.  And, there's also some soft, margarine-y yellow in the area, contributed by some asiatic lilies and Weigela middendorffiana.  I do like the soothing effect of a monochromatic palette--even when it is built around a bright like chartreuse! 

But the chartreuse/soft yellow is only one color story.  There's also a sort-of raspberry thread going on which includes Rosa mutabilis, Monarda "Raspberry Wine", Astilbes, and the dusky foliage of the bronze fennel and the "Sweet Tea" honeysuckle.  At some point in the year, the greenish yellows and the raspberry tones are going to intermingle. I keep hoping that I've added enough foliage to balance it all.

In the front yard, I am enjoying some of the lighter, more ethereal plants that I added during the big reshuffle.  That many of these plants make an earlier presence in the garden is a welcome side effect. 

Wispy plants in the front garden bed.

And I added one new plant to the front garden--Variegated Peuce, Peucedanum ostruthium "Daphnis".  I am quite taken with this plant, which looks a lot like variegated Aegopodium but has none of goutweed's bad habits.  I planted it in the back near the "Quick Fire" hydrangea, but it has enough height to be visible from the front and the early-season umbels will make a nice continuum with the umbellifers that bloom later on.  

One last photo--Amsonia "Blue Ice".  I love the inky, blue-purple buds!

Amsonia "Blue Ice"

Garden: Catching You Up on the Patio Project--Before, During, & at Present

This is "before."  Before we bought the house or moved in.  Before our little monkey-boy made an early entrance and started co-opting all our time.  And before we attacked the back yard with saws, sledge hammers, and you name it.  Bare, but at least clean, this was the best the back yard ever looked. 

Back yard "before".

This photo is especially kind to the cracked and listing retaining wall which was patched at the far end with random rocks and extended on the near end with small landscape blocks.  The photo doesn't allow for a tactile appreciation of the mounds of pea gravel that were used to "camouflage" swampy patches.  And the sod (poorly suited to swamp and shade and most likely installed right on top of the existing weeds) was giving up the fight even before we moved in.  So, yes...sad as it is, THIS was the best it ever looked. 

After a while, it looked like this--cracked, weedy, and covered with detritus from previous construction projects.  

(The monkey-boy is not detritus although he might be considered a construction project.)

For a time, I tried to cover-up the patio's inadequacies with floral exuberance...

...But, mostly, I just waited until I'd formalized my plans, researched building codes and best practices, and gotten my head around each phase of the upcoming project.  It was a BIG project--one that would involve a lot of demolition, paving, and building a retaining wall.  Many might wonder why I did not call in the professionals. And, actually, I never seriously considered it.  First and foremost, I am a dyed-in-the-wool DIY-er.  And I knew exactly the look I wanted and it was not a usual type of look.  I'd collected estimates for various portions of the project, and I knew I'd have to pay A LOT--if I could even get someone to do what I wanted--and "A LOT" wasn't in the budget.  This was definitely going to be a DIY project.  

I have a fair amount of experience with DIY and I budgeted about 480 man-hours for this job--2 people X 10 hours per person, per day X 12 weekends.  Of course, there were many portions of the job that I'd never attempted before.  Some parts of the project went quickly and some parts were much more difficult and took longer than projected.  However,  I think the rough estimate came pretty close to reality.  Overall, the project dragged on longer than expected, but that was mainly due to loss of focus and taking time off due to weather and illness.  We did not finish-up prior to the onset of winter rains (as we had hoped to do) so we had to postpone work on the project until early spring.

Here is a basic sketch that I drew to show my husband what I wanted to do to the back yard.  He's a good sport for moving ahead with the project even though he has little ability to visualize the end result and must move forward--with a LOT of destruction and hard labor--on the basis of blind faith.

Backyard sketch.

The house is represented by the area of white, negative space on the left side of the sketch.  The detail in the bottom left corner is the (proposed) patio surface of cut and re-laid concrete. There is an outdoor counter drawn adjacent to the house--its main purpose is to camouflage a crawl space hatch cover.  The counter is the only part of the plan not completed and I've decided to replace this element with a rolling bench/trellis.

Our house was built in 1954 and has modest mid-century styling. We decided to use concrete throughout the landscaping--doing so seemed both current and appropriate to the style of the house.  I was also concerned about keeping the effect modest and creative.  So, I decided to experiment with the use of concrete in many of its forms:  poured, blocks, rip rap, crushed etc.  I had already specified new, poured concrete stairs and entry path at the front of the house and I wanted to continue the use of concrete in a more informal manner at the back of the house.

This magazine clipping (below) was, I think, inspiration to cut up the existing concrete into strips.  I planned to re-lay them with the cut surfaces exposed as can be seen, here, on the fronts of the steps.

Landscape design by Shirley Watts Landscape Design

I also collected magazine clippings of several other designs which featured use of concrete strips of varying types. 

Magazine clipping--source unknown.

This picture (below) illustrating the proposed High Line inspired me with the way the plantings infiltrated the edges of the paving creating a soft look.

Illustration of High Line project, source unknown.

The first order of business was to cut the patio into 5" wide strips, which I intended to re-use.  We sought professional bids for this job, but were astounded by the cost.  Clearly, we could not afford to pay someone to turn our concrete into strips.  This brought on some soul searching.  Maybe it was too costly to indulge my aesthetic?  Maybe using pavers would be OK after all?   After dithering about it for a while, we decided that we could try to cut the concrete ourselves.   We marked the lines, rented a 20" concrete saw and went at it.  It took a long time.  I'm sure professionals could have done the job in a single weekend.  We suffered with a bad saw, a bad blade, various hassles and general inexperience, and it took us 3 weekends.  But we did it.  My husband operated the concrete saw while I followed along vacuuming up the concrete slurry--water from the saw mixed with concrete dust.  There was jack-hammering, too--both of the concrete and of the compacted hard-pan lying underneath. Eventually, we'd created enough concrete strips for our needs, removed the remainder, and lowered the ground level sufficiently to build a proper patio base.  We also jack-hammered out hardpan from the planting pockets which became, essentially, big basins.  

Beginning the concrete cutting job.

Because we didn't want to create an unprotected slope for any longer than necessary, we designated removal of the retaining wall as a separate project phase.  To preserve the wall, we severed the patio from the retaining wall and its footing, whatever that might prove to be.  And...it turned out to be nothing.  Not negligible, but really NOTHING.  The wall blocks were not even adhered to the base.  I'm surprised that the whole thing hadn't fallen down years ago.  We thought that removing the retaining wall would be one of the more difficult parts of the job--imagining that we would have to dig deep to excavate a substantial concrete footing--but, in fact, it was one of the easiest.

Much concrete gone; wall and footing remaining.  You can see how the wall doesn't extend all the way to the back of the hillside.

Reverse view.  This is our back door, kitchen and  bathroom windows.

Look!  Here's our "concrete harvest".  I planned to re-lay the strips on their sides (cut surface facing up) with the original tops together and the rough (ground cast) sides facing each other and separated by about 4 inches of packed gravel.

Harvest of concrete "sticks".

The roughly leveled patio base is in--a good working surface for the rest of the job--and we moved on to the retaining wall construction.

The patio base is 5" below grade.  When it rains, you know what that means, right?

Some work has been done...but more rain.  I started laying strips in the middle of the patio area and worked out to both sides to avoid amplifying any errors across the entire project.  In the end, though, I was really proud of the degree of accuracy that we were able to achieve.

One of the difficulties of this job was that the homemade concrete cutting did not yield strips that were uniformly 5" deep.  I had envisioned the concrete-laying part of the job to be like laying pavers on a leveled base when, in actuality, it was more like laying flagstones--lots of trial and error, back-filling and minor adjustment to account for their varying thickness.

Half done!  I filled-in between the strips with packed gravel and at the ends (where I wanted to plant) with a soil/gravel mix.

Eventually, I worked my way to the other end and completed the patio.  

And then I built an arbor.  And I constructed a paver path (meant to be a little more temporary, because I don't love it so much) along the house to the storage shed and continuing on around the side of the house.  We decided to give up on the idea of growing grass in our shady, swampy backyard and put down cedar play chips instead.  The first plants went in during the spring and summer of 2012.

The state of things at the end of summer 2012.

But...I never liked the way the patio ended so abruptly and the planting area looked stingy and narrow.  In my defence, I was trying to accommodate family desires to retain a maximum amount of open space in the yard.  It didn't look right, though.  And the remaining space is so small anyway...and still swampy...so I extended the path all the way to the shed and added additional planting space between the paths.  I used the same plants on both sides of the straight path and encourage them to overhang the path thereby minimizing its appearance.

Extending the path through the back yard.  Spring 2013.

We had taken most of the extra concrete sticks to a recyclers, but I retained a few pieces to be used in an "emergency."  Extending the path was just this sort of emergency.  Much to my husband's chagrin, we now found ourselves returning to the concrete recycler to clamber over the piles of dumped riprap in search of concrete chunks to BRING BACK HOME! It was a little embarrassing, I'll grant you, but free!

Rough fitting of the new path "stones".

This (below) is probably one of the most current pictures of this area.  The new area between the paths, which was completed and planted this spring, has really filled out.  Alchemilla is planted everywhere at the "three corners" intersection of the path.  Other plants are Brunnera macrophylla, Siberian iris, Darmera peltata, and Lobelia siphilitica.  The big plant with pink blooms (fading) is Eupatorium cannabinum flore pleno, which has grown much bigger than anticipated and (much to my disappointment) is sterile--so disappointing to see hopeful bees or butterflies approach for a closer look before turning and looking elsewhere.  In spring, I'll replace this plant with something else.

"Swamp Garden" and view back towards the house and patio--late summer 2013.

So, in summary...

Before

After (At Present)

I take pride in the fact that the finished project closely resembles the original plan.  I think the construction is well done, too.  We've spent more time in this back area than we did prior to the remodel. And we've seen an unanticipated benefit as well--the old patio used to hold water during rains and, while never flooding into the house, remained a swimming pool all winter.  We took pains, throughout this project, to correct the drainage issues.  That, and the fact that the porous design drains better than the solid slab, has yielded a patio surface that remains dry in even the heaviest storms.  All in all, a satisfying outcome.

Garden: A Peek at the Back Yard Projects

Well, probably I should wait until it is "finished" to show pictures of the back yard.  But who knows when that will be?  And, besides, I'm a 90%-er, right?  So this is the back yard project 90% complete. The fence, gabion pillar, low gate, and the plantings behind the retaining wall are all new.  I've one more post hole to dig and one more fence panel to install.  I have purchased a few plants for this new area:  a "mutabilis" rose, "Adagio" miscanthus, "Sweet Tea" honeysuckle, and a columnar apple, some blueberries, and a grape (the first of two).  

I decided to build the retaining wall at an angle to the property line.  On one hand, it gives me the opportunity to plant larger shrubs in the far (wider) end.  It also allows someone entering the space to see the face of all the plantings--all the way down the length of the planting bed--for full and lush effect (I hope).  And it curves the gaze around to the left instead of dead-ending into the slope at the back of our property.  That was my theory, anyway.

Backyard view from the side-yard walkway.

I'm pleased with the plantings along the side-yard walkway.  On the right is a monoculture of Japanese Anemone and, on the left, out of the frame of the photo, is a monoculture of native wood sorrel (Oxalis oregana).  I like having a quiet moment in transition from the front yard to the back.