With a yearly goal to have my garden ready by the start of summer, I assessed my new garden plot, gained from our recent deck reconstruction project.
Assessing the new garden space on May 23, I learned the dirt was hard as a rock and the creeping vines were exceedingtly difficult to pull up.
In fact, these vines not only creep and dig into the soil, they even dig into the fence shared with our neighbor.
Undaunted, I chipped away at the dirt to pull away all the yuck.
After all, I’ve done this in my Texas gardens and other Virginia garden.
Surely I could clean this up this week, then plant my garden by Memorial Day weekend. Wrong.
While digging up vines with my hand rake, I discovered a brick under the dirt.
Thinking I had conquered, I bought a few plants, then began digging, only to find a flagstone…
And a gorgeous chunk of quartz, a piece of flagstone, and a huge chunk of rock.
However, when I found an earthworm, I felt quite encouraged!
Soon I had enough flagstone to build a pathway, near which I planted an herb garden, beyond which a row of discovered bricks I’ve neatly laid.
Then I returned to digging holes in the other side of the garden so I could amend the bad soil with peat moss, in preparation for plantings, as I did for the herbs.
In the process, I found another flagstone…
Three days later, I dug up all this flagstone, paver bricks, and misc rocks.
In order to plant my flowers, I needed to dig a few feet to remove the rocks and amend the soil, which exhuasted me, so my husband helped!
After I returned the next day, I asked him to stop, because I only needed a couple of feet for flowers, not a hole to the other side of the world! I think he wanted to conquer the world! =)
After separating out the ones I wanted to keep, I organized all the other stones by type on the other side of the retaining wall, which I advertised on my Nextdoor App.
Inviting my neighbors to come take whatever of those stones they wanted, I was delighted that they came in droves.
They all shared stories of gratitude for this freebie, since buying them is expensive.
Some even sent me pictures of their updated gardens with these once buried rocks.
Then I amended my soil so I could plant the flowers lined up along the deck.
Finding lots of quartz, I laid them along the left side of the garden as a dry creek bed to enable better drainage.
With all the small red and green stones I found, I laid them alongside the fence on the other side of the garden for a dry creek bed, where I had planted some cannas and other hot looking flowers.
While interviewing contractors to remove our front garden bed, we transferred the gorgeous hostas to the back.
Love the lighting from our new deck steps that allow us egress from the upper deck.
Before the deck remodel, there was no egress from the deck.
Still awaiting transplanting into the new garden section…
Love our new deck and garden space!
All my flowers are from my favorite garden center, Merrifield Garden Center in Northern Virginia.
