Garden Timeline 2012

2012

The year 2012 was a big gardening year for us, seeing the initiation of several projects:

• a formal pond and gardens around it
• the large Rainbow Border
• the White Garden on the west terrace of the addition we had built in 2011
• planting the borders around the addition that were laid out the previous fall

I had long wished for a water feature in my gardens, and in 2012 I had a guy with a backhoe scoop out a 6'x10' by two feet deep hole on the south side of our driveway. We lined it with a black EPDM liner and put paving stones around the edge.

Then I used a rented sod cutter to remove the grass in four L-shaped beds around the pond, in which I planted roses, dianthus, phlox and boxwood shrubs. I got a small solar-powered fountain for the center of the pond and planted two water lilies in the water.

Another big project was the Rainbow Border, a 70-foot-long meandering border against our east windbreak with flower colors that progressed through the colors of the rainbow: white, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and back to white at the far end.

To the west of the library addition, I laid sod, planted the terrace with boxwoods and white-flowering plants, and put a pergola there that I bought online and spray painted white.

By mid-summer, the white flowers made an impact.

I also planted many more plants in the addition borders, in jewel tones of blue, purple, orange and yellow.

The Google Earth photo taken in September 2012 shows the many changes we made to our property that year,
particularly the pond and garden beds, and the long Rainbow Border in front of the East Windbreak, at right.

Finally giving up on trying to prevent the weeds and grass from growing into our larger vegetable garden (we ended up just mowing off the garden the previous two years, because the water pooled here a bit and the ground would be too damp to till before the grass was knee-high), I re-designed our Kitchen Garden. Mulched paths between wood-outlined beds filled with soil and compost made it much easier to keep weeds out, and I also dug a 90-foot long drainage trench around the perimeter of the garden, to keep the garden dry enough to work in even in rainy times.

2013  >>