Landscaping - Installing the Sitting area

As I mentioned in my last post, the next step after making the planting bed was creating the sitting area.

We covered the area with decomposed granite (DG for short). It is cheaper than concrete and allows rain to percolate through so it is better for the soil. It is supposed to pack down and solidify. That is still a work in progress. But I am getting ahead of myself.

To prep the ground for the DG, John cut the grass down almost to the dirt. Here he is using the weed eater on it. He also removed some of the dirt where the ground was too high.

 I realized after I posted last time that I neglected to put a picture of the finished planting bed. So you can see that here too.

After cutting the grass down he checked for low or high places and added and/or removed dirt as needed.  

There used to be a strip of white rock next to the house. I didn't want that there anymore so he removed it. That's why there's no grass along there. The large black pipe in the trench next to the house connects our drip irrigation system on the side of the house with the faucet at the front. If you look closely you can also see a small brown tube laying next to the black pipe. That's an irrigation tube to water the foundation. 

It may sound crazy but "watering the foundation" is a thing here. It is actually watering the soil around the foundation to keep it evenly moist. The soil in this area is a type of clay that expands and contracts easily with changes in moisture levels. Our weather varies a lot from drought to floods, and freezing to heat. The frequent changes in the soil puts stress on foundations here and can even make them crack. So watering the soil around the foundation helps keep it and the foundation from cracking. 

The grooves in the grass on the right side of the photo are where there were irrigation tubes to water the grass. Those aren't needed for the sitting area so John removed them. Val, our landscape designer, said not to put any on the planting bed either since the plants she chose for that are drought tolerant and won't appreciate regular watering. We generally only water the grass once a week but she said they wouldn't tolerate even that much. 

Once the ground was smooth and level, accept for a slight slope away from the house, he covered it with heavy duty weed barrier cloth. 

The wind didn't help, but it makes for a more interesting photo.

It was nearly dark and the streetlight beside our house was already on by the time it was done and ready for the the DG.

The DG on the right in the photo below is the one that is most common in our area and was what Val recommended. But we discovered the large kind, on the left, at Earthtones Greenery in Midlothian, about 30 minutes from us. We thought it would be less likely to track into the house on our shoes so we got it instead. They had large a sitting area of it at Earthtones. It looked quite nice and was well packed down and solid. They said we would need three inches of it which was more than what Val had said we would need of the other kind. But that seemed reasonable and it made it more even with our front entry way.

We were thrilled to learn that Earthtones offered delivery--saving us multiple trips with our little car and lots of loading and unloading. We were also able to borrow a wheelbarrow from a coworker of John's. 

They Earthtones Greenery delivery man dumped the DG onto a tarp we put out on the curb in our front yard. 

John dumping the first load of DG onto the prepared sitting area.

The n95 mask was great protection against the DG dust. It didn't look like it was generating much dust but after helping John for a few minutes I could feel it lodging in my sinuses so I put one on and insisted John use one too. 

Spreading DG with the back of a rake.

Starting the seemingly endless process of packing and leveling. The hand tool John is using here doesn't seem too heavy the first few times you pick it up and drop it but after the first several hundred, or so, times I suspect the weight starts to add up!

Watering DG is supposed to help it solidify. We'll see. So far it is still fairly loose. Hopefully my friend Susan is right and it will pack down more as the weather warms up. It keeps getting churned up though and we have to keep releveling it. I hope it doesn't suddenly decide to solidify on a day while it is churned up before we've gotten around to re-leveling it again. 

The finished sitting area. 

So that is the the sitting area installed. We hope to add more color to it and other things--like things to sit on for example. But that will come later. Next up: plants in the planting bed! 

Landscaping -- the large Planting bed

If you've been following our landscaping saga, you know that last year we had to remove our two big ash trees out front that were killed by a severe winter storm in February. Since then we have been working to install new landscaping. The first stage was to plant a new shade tree on the left side of the yard ("left" when looking from the street). Now we are working on stage 2--the large-ish planting bed on the right side.  

John finished building the planting bed in January. But we have been waiting for more propitious weather to plant things in it. Val, our landscape designer, said we could plant in January and just cover things in case of frost. But I wanted to hold off until Spring. I don’t know if I was right but we have had two winter storms with snow and ice since then so I’m glad we waited. Also John was having carpal tunnel problems from all the digging he's been doing and I have chronic health problems that cause fatigue. So I wanted to take advantage of the winter to take a break from major gardening and give ourselves a rest. Isn't rest and hibernation part of what winter is about? 

But now it is half way into March so our hiatus is just about up. I should say mine is, John started digging on another gardening project in the back a few weeks ago. That's another story, though. 

So on to our current story -- building the planting bed:

The first step, in December, was to stake out the area. You probably can't see it but, there is string strung between each stake. The brown patch is part of where the ash tree was that we had removed last year. (John transplanted grass on the area outside of the planting bed area some time before I took this photo.)

He marked the area with blue marking paint and removed he stakes and string. Then he removed the grass from inside the area and transplanted it to the other side of the yard to where the other ash tree used to be on that side. 

This is the area on the other side. The transplanted grass is in small plugs spaced over the area.
It is a larger area to fill in because we had liriope growing around that tree. John has valiantly dug it up since the tree was removed. I'm sorry if you like liriope, but I don't want a large pointless patch of it in the middle of the grass. (It's a long story why we didn't have it around both trees. I'm very glad now we did not! It's invasive and hard to get rid of!)

Then he dug up several inches of dirt and saved it in bags to mix with compost to then add back to the planting bed.

A major part of the job was dealing with the roots from the dead ash tree.

Some roots he dug out, some he sawed out with a saws-all and some he chopped out with an ax

The pile of roots he dug, chopped or otherwise cut out.

And some are too big to remove. Val told him to drill holes in them and squirt molasses into the holes. The molasses is supposed to encourage the microbes that will eat the dead roots. 

John drilling holes in the big tree roots he couldn't remove. He then used my turkey baster to inject gardening molasses into the holes.

Next he installed edging.

Then he dug up another layer of the soil and mixed it with compost (and maybe something else but I don't remember). And then he put it all back into the bed and leveled it as he went. 

The final step was to cover it with mulch to protect the soil from drying out.

He then installed the sitting area. But I'll save that for another post.

Next I need to contact Val and arrange to get the plants she has for us. We also need to find a desert willow which will be the focal point of the planting bed.

I have wrestled with how much to research and re-think her choices. But I decided to stop tying myself in knots over it all and just go with what she suggests.  I hired her because she is an expert that was recommended to me by someone I trust. Not to say she is perfect or that we can't disagree with her at all. We have made a few minor changes as we have gone along. But I just don't have time and energy for constantly second guessing and worrying about everything all the time.

So anyway, I need to arrange a time to get the plants soon and then we can plant!