The yard between ourselves and our neighbor, Steve, had been a bit of a twister. We didn't want grass and we needed to maintain some sort of pathway for things in/out the gate. Fortunately, Steve is very easy-going and was on-board with the plan to envision the space as one large one rather than two small ones... especially if we did the work and it was low-maintenance. I proposed a sort of "dry creek bed" arrangement and it was a go.
Ryan and Jaime showed up at 10am after Casie and I spent Friday night and Saturday morning gathering plants and some more rocks (free from the Ewing parking lot -- someone dumped a small load of baseball-sized cobblestones and I asked if I could have them). So, on Friday, I got an idea/motivation, to tackle the rest of the front landscaping and by Saturday afternoon, we had something in place. Not a bad showing.
We tried to buy smaller sized pots so that (1) they'd be cheaper and (2) grow-in a bit more naturally... and ended up with a lot of native or low-water plants like Ceanothus, Wax Myrtle, Tea-tree (definitely not native, but low-water), Flax, Sedum, Fescue/Grasses, Cotoneaster, Juniper... and a Corylus -- which looks cool (but will take the most water). The most expensive plant (not counting the Burgundy Lace maple) was a sculptural, knobby (San Jose) Juniper for $40, which will serve as a specimen/focal plant next to the Corylus (Filbert/Hazelnut tree). All have a 1/2 gallon/hour drip head... hopefully just the right amount of water in the right place... and should be pretty low-maintenance.
We were also able to use up the big pile of rocks that we had in the back yard -- gathered from various places in the yard when we stripped many of the overgrown trees.
Presently, there's not yet enough scale differentiation... there's still a lot of growing-in to do (some of the plants will triple in size), but...
Mama like! I actually think it's my fave... You have me motivated to go swipe some rocks from around town.
Posted by: Christine Stanley | June 22, 2009 at 09:44 PM