Hardscaping

We seem to be in hardscaping mode-that is permanent structures, usually of rock or wood.

We actually started out years ago dragging some old timbers out of the woods and making a corner garden by the driveway. I put in plastic edging around garden beds to hold edges while we figured out what to do next. Every time I found another stash of brick ( it's in several places) I used it to shore up garden beds too.
After you have survived laying a slate patio ( and in pieces, not squares) it all seems pretty easy. the walls around the patio went up fast-big heavy flat stones you can seat 2 or 3 rows deep without mortar, and capstones. Cool! that led to replacing a corner of a lower garden bed with this stone and my upper flower bed. it looks- nice!

Bruce is up putting in scalloped edging around the nettles and comfrey I use for the compost pile. a lousy soil tucked in to small trees; a corner that needed help-I figured these lovely dynamic accumulators would be happy, and whenever I have extra compost or manure, on it goes..

so now with the old greenhouse out of here, we can see an opportunity to add some flowering trees and benches, and an archway with roses. that's how it works, you do one thing, see another.We are also going to use paving stones in the strip between the deck house and patio., leaving a space for something formal, an espaliered fruit tree is tops on my list.all high and dry and level; which would have seemed impossible when we moved to this uh, hill.Hardscaping isn;t that hard. consider it; bed edgings or terraces....all sorts of new opportunities arise when you give plants different environments!

When Bruce pulled out the brick to put the bigger stone in on the corner of what is now an onion bed, i got another nice surprise, 2 years of mulching, putting in compost, broadforking, etc, and the ground is fabulous at least 6 inches down. brown, not red clay. I am so pleased!Tilling would never have done the same thing!this is better soil than the original raised beds; I hadn;t really looked deeply at the time ( no till, with newspaper) but it;s all the crud the builder moved aside after driveway.septic system. terrible in fact. but even that is giving way to good organic practices.the garlic sure is lovely!