OT-PLANTS: New Garden
- Subject: OT-PLANTS: New Garden
- From: J* R*
- Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 10:50:01 -0800
Just thought someone staring at a snowfield might like to dream. Since
someone else just asked for a description of my garden, I decided to share
it. Hope you enjoy, an opposed to considering it inapropriate for the
forum:
My garden is a work in progress. I bought this house four years ago; it
took me 6 months to find one with a decent sized lot (15,400 square feet).
Most of the lots around here are tiny, about 8000 square feet; new
construction is on 4500 square foot lots. Mine has a small front yard, a
2-story 2000 square foot house with a 3-car garage, and a long back yard
about 70 x 120. About 40% of that is flat; the back slopes uphill at about
a 1-in-5 grade. We just put a pool in at the base of the slope, cut into
the hill a bit to give elevation to the waterfalls. It is a fantasy pool, I
guarantee. We terraced the slope behind the pool with 3-ft. retaining walls
using the same fake rock; I brought in 280 cubic yards of topsoil to
backfill the planter areas. This was all done because our soil is horrible
adobe clay, slimy, alkaline, and with absolutely no drainage. We will be
planting the area directly behind the pool with tropicals (palms, giant
bird-of-paradise, philodendrum, bananas, orchids, spider plants, etc.). The
middle beds will be for flowers (mostly iris) and some flowering bushes and
vines. The gazebo will sit in the upper left corner, surrounded by
flowering bushes and climbing vines. The top section will have about a
dozen assorted fruit trees (citrus, tropicals, and deciduous). The entire
garden will be surrounded by a grewia caffra (lavender starflower) hedge.
In front of the pool we have 3 huge phoenix canariensis palms, 1 large bed
for louisiana iris, and one bed of mixed low-level flowering shrubs with a
couple of "accent" plants including an alexander magnolia. Off to the side
of the pool, next to one of the waterfalls and partly shaded by the
canarariensis, will be a Japanese maple, an elephant ear "coco", and a tree
fern. We will be trying to wedge a few relatively hardy tillandsias into
cracks built into the fake rock walls around the pool. I even had one small
plant pocket built into the rock behind the main waterfall (and opening into
the cave) for shade-loving "house plants).
Wow! Still a work in progress, and all the new palms won't look like much
for 10 years, but this is a fantasy project, as you can probably guess. Our
3-year-old daughter is going to be spoiled rotten.
John Reeds, in sunny southern California
jreeds@microsensors.com
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