10%

Our newest garden area:

The "Triangle" garden. Although it doesn't look like a triangle now, it started out as this:

One way to lay out garden areas is to use a hose. The problem with that is that eventually you''ll want to use the hose as a hose. We have plenty of fallen trees and branches, which I used to delineate this and other garden areas. And they can be left in place as borders, holding in the dirt, compost, and mulch. And making it clear this is a designed area, not just a messy yard. It also shows where to mow.

As with other garden projects, we used the 'lasagna' method. First cardboard, then dirt/compost, then mulch.

I told you we had a lot of downed branches. Here they are holing down the cardboard, and will add interest to the final garden. They also serve as shelter and nest sites for all manner of little critters.

Dirt from the hole for the new Mini-Bog, a bag of potting soil we had in the quonset hut, and the last of the compost from the Bench Garden project covered the cardboard. Fortunately I hadn't gotten too far when the chief landscape architect decided the triangle was too pointy.

A bit of sawing, dirt moving, and the reconfiguration met with her approval.

Look closely and you'll see some of the plants were moved about as well.

A water feature in the form of a birdbath with a solar powered fountain and mulch in the form of wood chips. I've a chipper and now fewer of those fallen branches I mentioned earlier.

The image at the top is the 'finished', for now, garden. Patty's got six trays of seeds sprouting in our indoor greenhouse. And I'm sure we'll be visiting native plant nurseries, as soon as such things are safe to do. Until then there's mail order.

🌳  🌱  🌿  🎋  🍃  🍂  🌾  🌻

Two Saturdays and what seems like a lifetime ago, Patty and I went to the annual meeting of the NJ Native Plant Society. I mentioned that meeting in the Mini-Bog post. A talk by Pat Sutton earlier in the day on Wildlife Gardening reiterated much of what we heard at Doug Tallamy's talk in February. But where Dr. Tallamy advocated putting aside 50% of one's lawn as native gardens, Ms. Sutton suggested putting aside 10% a year, as a more manageable goal. Further suggesting that most folks would be so pleased with the result in the first year they would make hit the 50% mark by the third or even the second year.

We've been doing what I've been calling the "War on Lawn" since we moved in. This year, in addition to the Mini-Bog and Triangle Garden, we are expanding the 'grassland' area out by the back pond. We are also putting aside part of our front yard, across the driveway from the Mini-Meadow, as a no-mow zone, just to see what grows there.

We'll still have some lawn, but much less than when we first moved in. And that's a good thing.