The Townhouse Garden 2009 - Flower Power, Pictures From The Season

Every season, it's important to make time to take some pictures when things are at their best, you wait all year for this moment, it would be a shame to let it go by without that memory to look back on. Especially when the weathers the shits and you wonder why you live on the wet coast.

A little harvest of onions, carrots and beans.


Stargazer Lily's bought from http://www.botanus.com/

Dahlia's "Rip City", they put on a real show.

My window boxes overflowing with Geraniums and Marigolds I started from seed. No that's not a new kind of grey foliage plant, that's my Dahlia's under stress in late August with powdery mildew.

Sweet Pea's one of my favorite garden flowers.

Gay Feather

I inherited this Daffodil from this garden, it has the most wonderful scent.

Peek-a-boo

This Sunflower "Russian Giant" grew to about 14 feet, a real skyscraper!

The harvested seed heads, great to leave out for the birds to pick at.

20" across in size.

Rhododendron

Sometimes you have to have your camera out at just the right moment, this butterfly stayed just long enough to get this shot. I guess I've created a space for the birds, the bee's and butterflies! I don't use any chemicals or pesticides on my garden.

Rhododendron "Horizon Monarch" I love the blousey flower trusses, a real show stopper.

Azalea "Crimson Red", English Daisy's and Gold Basket Allysum, I love the honey scent of the blossoms.

Cherry Blossom Tree, Kwansan also one of my favorites, a late bloomer.

Forget-me-not, a volunteer that comes back year after year

I really love the look of the dark green leaves and bright orange flowers of this marigold. Especially against the granite rocks.

Marigold "Sparky Mix"I started these from seed and transplanted them close together and they grew into a lovely mat of flowers that didn't need a lot of care and put on an real show till frost.

The Townhouse Garden 2009 - Summers Bounty

Now that the new beds have been created and amended, I planted my seeds.

Along with some Dahlia's, and Sunflower Seeds

Tomato's I started from seed,"Bonny Best"

The Garden is it's full glory, there's some radishes, carrots, onions, marigolds, sweet peas, pole beens, corn, a few Dahlia's and some weeds thrown in for good measure.

Those sunflowers are sure getting really tall.

I wanted to create a garden with rooms.
This is one of them, with some onions drying on the table.
Doesn't that look cozy.

Another perspective.

I'm quite happy with the way the backyard makeover turned out, but with all gardens it's continues to evolve.

The Townhouse Garden 2009 - Grass Be Gone

With the fence project behind me, I am left with a muddy backyard as shown below.

Yuck! This was the state of the grass in late March.

As the spring progressed, other garden project took my time, but I can no longer ignore the state of the grass. I had always planned on removing it, as it's just not practical in this little backyard. The fence shades most of it for half of the year and if that doesn't kill it, then my small dog does a good job at it to, as seen by the brown patches. So with a lot of elbow grease and many trips to the dump, I removed all the grass, put 2 layers of landscape fabric down, and put down 3/4 inch crushed granite and some stepping stones.



What a difference it has made to the backyard. It really looks great against the nicely stained cedar fence and the granite boarder fits perfectly. No longer are you distracted from the garden with shabby looking grass.

The view from the other side of the yard.
Another total benefit to this new ground cover is that it still leaves room for the dog to do his business, and when he comes back inside his paws are no longer dirty although he does miss his grass, but hey, that's what walks are for. So the garden continues to grow, oh yes I will be dealing with the 2X4's they are the cross pieces for the arbour. A project for 2010.

The Townhouse Garden 2009 - Backyard Makeover

It's March 29, 2009, and the fence project is finally finished. It's the first weekend of nice weather and I'm now embarking on my next major garden project. I am going to totally renovate the back garden, nothing will stay the same. I have big plans, what's new.

Looking through the side gate, I can envision where my new arbours will be, along with the new veggie garden and rose bed.
In this view, I see I need to move the rhodo and reposition the rocks to create a smoother transition from one side of the yard to the next.

This is were the new arbour and veggie garden are going to be.

The new path from the patio to the gravel walkway will be straight ahead.

I like the natural element the granite rocks adds to the garden. I didn't want any hard edges, so the rocks have been re-worked with lots of graceful curves and positioned to flow from one rock to the next. It was not as easy as it may seem to match up the rocks, I sure got a workout that day.

Time to call out the troops and start on those 2 simple arbours. One will be bordering the veggie garden.

The other arbour will be framing the doorway.

In go the posts. When the fence was installed I observed how they set the post, they used a product called Stake-rite, a quick setting cement. They dug the wholes, positioned the post, poured in the dry Stake-rite cement, put the cross pieces in and then soaked around the base of the posts with water. No need to premix and pour, this worked great.

Ahh the sight of the new arbours are a beautiful thing.

I picked up a free load of composted horse manure which I'm going to incorporate into the soil by rototilling the garden. The soil that was under the grass was clay and quite compact and I couldn't have broken it up without some mechanical assistance.

Can't you just picture all the things that can grow in this new space!

The additional garden beds here will be planted with roses and other perennials.

The roses have been transplanted, the next project will be to plant up the garden and remove the rest of the grass, to be replaced with 3/4 inch crushed granite. In a perfect world I would kept the grass as it looks great against the granite rocks but the continued damage done by my dog is just to much for this little strip to handle.

The Townhouse Garden 2009 - The Fence Project

Well it's been a while since my last post, a year actually, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been a busy little bee in my garden. There has been some major changes to the backyard landscape, okay it was a total overhaul.

Here is where it all started

After a unusually cold and snowy winter, it was March, and the time had finally come to start the fence replacement project for the complex. Yeah, I have been waiting for that for 3 years.

Here is a refresher on how the Fence looked.

That ugly fence, with the gate that would always stick.

Another thing I really didn't like about the fence is that it went up 4 ft and the top 1 ft was a see through lattice portion. Living on a main street with people always walking by, I didn't like that anyone and their dog could see was I was doing in my backyard. Even though I knew that fence would be replaced, last season I put up plywood to cover the lattice portion and painted the whole fence on the inside of the backyard, only then was able to live with it for one more year.

Going.....

Going....

Gone, goodbye and good riddance, is all I can say!

Our new fence is being constructed by Premium Fence.

In go the new posts, our old fence zigzagged in and out and had brick pillars on the ends of each of the corners. One reason the fence was so ugly, is that overtime the brick pillars settled and pulled the fence along in either direction, it looked like it was falling over and was coming away in spots.

The new fence is going to be perfectly straight.

The now open division between mine and my Neighbours yard




It's going to be so nice with new fence, because the zigzags have now been eliminated, I will gain an extra 2 feet depth as you can kind of see by were the grass ends and the new posts are.

The fence boards ready to be installed.

My yard seems to go on for ever, if only that were the case.

Alekazam ,Tada, new fence

The bricks where the BBQ was, I had re-used them from the west side of the house.

All that extra space, 2feet, I think I will put the compost bin there, it's full shade, good spot for it.

I will have to move the Rhodo to fit the space properly.

The Granite rocks will have to be moved to accommodate the new gate, it was moved over slightly from its former position.

This area will be the new veggie garden, it gets full sun for most of the day. Before the fence was replace I had to move any plants and equipment that I wanted to keep away from the old fence, the yard is a mess, but things can finally find a home.

I have a lot of cleaning up to do, plants have been trampled and wood pieces and concrete are littered throughout the garden. I'll salvage what plants I can. As you can see above the herb garden doesn't look so happy.

Lots to clean up.

Another thing I am going to do is rip up all the grass and replace it with 3/4" crushed gravel. The grass is half dead and full of mud. It has never really grown very well, and having a medium sized dog doing damage to the grass doesn't help.