Our Backyard, Part 2: Dreams for the Future
This is an ongoing series about our backyard. Here’s part 1.
To figure out our goals for the landscaping at our house, I started searching for visual inspiration. I’m ignorant enough about gardening and landscaping that I didn’t know the name for my preferred style until I decided to treat this like an interiors projects: gather images of what I love, and then find the thread that connects it all together.
It didn’t take too long to find the thread connecting my images: I am super into cottage gardens. Though I tend to love order and tidiness, there’s something so romantically appealing about them. A lush palette of flowers and shrubs mingling together, providing opportunities for successions of blooms throughout spring, summer, and fall. The informality of it seems particularly well-suited to our yard.
Landscaping Inspiration
I tried so hard to find original sources for these images; I’ve linked where possible. My full Pinterest inspiration board is here.
The next struggle is turning this inspiration into reality. While I’m no horticulturist, I am basically an expert at visually analyzing photos. It’s become my understanding that a cottage garden is generally created by building a framework of perennial shrubs and bushes and then layering in annual flowers for color and texture. Plants are planted closely together in mounds rather than in rows or grids. Variation is key: height, texture, foliage color.
Some cottage gardens have a more overgrown look, but that’s not what I’m going for here. I’m going for lush, full, colorful. I don’t want one flush of blooms in April and May and then greenery for the rest of the year, so I need to look at plants that bloom at different times. I’ve noticed that mounds of roses and hydrangeas are often used as base plants, and I love that direction; I’ll select some rose bushes that repeat-flower for summer-long color.
The Guest House
The two beds in front of the guest house/workshop are the smallest ones we have. They’re also on the north side, so the area doesn’t get much direct sunlight, though it’s bright. Since this photo was taken, Joey removed that bush on the left. I’d like this spot to have more permanent landscaping. As a start, this fall we planted peonies (1, 2). Peonies prefer full sun, but, well… I have my fingers crossed. If they fail to thrive there, I’ll move them and plant something else.
When he was digging around in the yard this summer, Joey found a bucket’s worth of mystery bulbs. We saved them and planted them in the fall. Time will tell what they are, and they’ll be something to look at this spring while we make firmer plans.
The Fence Line
This long stretch of fence is where most of those inspiration photos will be relevant. This is along the north side of our yard (facing south). The trees provide some dappled shade during the summer, but it’s bright. I’m still figuring out how to plant larger perennials in here while working around the trees. This weekend, we removed the slightly raised bed so the landscaped area will continue to the edge of the corner bed. The next step is to find some mismatched rocks to continue the edge of the bed. This year, we’ll plant a few peonies (this kind) and maybe a shrub or two.
I’m taking it slow, but I’m also giving myself the freedom to fail. While we work on landscaping plans, I’ve also decided to start a cutting garden this year (that bed, the one by the pond, will be more like a farm than a cottage garden.) I’m starting more than 40 varieties from seed. But I plan to plant some of these out into the landscaping beds to see how it goes. Starting plants from seed is a lower pressure way to experiment. Seeds pretty inexpensive, and if a plant doesn’t thrive where I put it or if I don’t love the way I planted, they’re annuals, and they’ll be dead in a few months! I can mostly start over next year.
Here are a few varieties that will be making their debut this year:
The Veggie Patch
The back fence line is all raised beds. These will be dedicated to vegetables. Whoever built these used fill dirt instead of soil, which lead to an absolute failure last year. We’ve amended with compost and have higher hopes for this year (it can’t go any worse than last year, truly). I’m starting lots of things from seed - tomatoes, brussels sprouts, peppers, zucchini, lettuce, broccoli, carrots. These photos are from the week we moved in (April 2020).
The arch had grapevines growing all over it last spring. Unfortunately the vines had a fungal problem, and we had to cut them all the way back. Spring will reveal if that worked or if the fungus is in the base of the vine as well.
Our area has so many rodents that I wonder how much success I’ll ever have back here - rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks all cause their own problems. Rabbits ate the cantaloupe; chipmunks dug around, squirrels took one bite of each tomato and threw the rest to the ground. Birds ransacked the blackberry bushes. I think we’re going to give ourselves another 2 years of trying for success. If I can’t beat the critters, I’ll lean into flower farming back here.
Ultimately, I’m not sure what to expect back here, other than several years of hard work and surprise outcomes. Joey and I spend a lot of time walking around and imagining possibilities. I can’t wait to see what happens next
