Landscaping!

My customary backyard activities -- at least, during the non-tundra months -- fall into two categories: gardening and loafing.

The loafing takes many forms: enjoying the outdoor fireplace we got for Christmas (thanks, Mom!), reading a book in the hammock (thanks, Dad!), drinking morning coffee on the veranda with the newspaper, having a beer on the patio set (thanks, D and D!) with friends or neighbors.

The gardening, detailed in other posts, usually involves planting, weeding, picking tomatoes, moving stuff around, more weeding and occasionally digging up a little sod to make more room for something.

However, on a recent weekend in April, my outdoor effort was about ohsomuchmorethangardening. It was officially landscaping, and believe me, I was pretty terrified about it.

Taking a Hard Look
This all came about because, like most Zone 4 gardeners, I spent all winter poring over gardening magazines, books and Web sites, dreaming of the backyardtobe. Given our winter, that's about seven months of absorbing all the gardening information I could handle. In addition to feeding my "zone envy," all this knowledge started pushing me up against some hard truths about what I did and didn't do last year.

In terms of planting perennials, here are some the things I did right last summer: researched and selected plants that perform well in my area and climate, listened to what the nursery folks had to tell me, and... um, actually that might be about it.

Among the worst of my garden-related sins from last summer: I didn't pay any attention to the soil. I had no idea what kind we had, and I didn't do anything to amend it. I figured it was difficult enough to get up to speed on selecting and taking care of plants that I hoped the whole soil conundrum could wait.

As I read and studied over the winter, I realized that whatever soil we had on our lot probably wasn't ideal for supporting a long-term garden. Oh sure, the peonies were doing fine, but they'd probably been planted before I was born and had plenty of time (and better care) to get established. What I needed for a real perennial border, it became clear, were raised beds.

You Mean I Have To Do What?!?
So I finally did something right: I called the extension service. I'd heard nothing but rave reviews about how helpful they were, and they were indeed. I just wasn't happy to hear what they had to say. I left the following voice-mail:

Hi, I just started gardening last summer, and I didn't really know what I was doing, so I planted a bunch of perennials in my backyard soil, which is pretty bad. I'm thinking of doing raised beds. Can I just pile more soil around my existing plants [I knew there was no way this would work, but I was hoping], or do I need to dig them all up and replant in the new beds? I'm really worried about my peonies; I hear they don't like to be moved.

A very nice master gardener named Carol called me back.

Yes, I'm afraid you'll need to dig up all the perennials and replant them. [Assorted tips and encouragement about the peonies, e.g., you're right, they don't like to be moved or divided, but it'll be okay, etc.] It sounds like a fun project -- I hope you enjoy it!

Fun? Not if everything dies in the process. Oy.

The Heavy Lifting
So I brought in some reinforcements to help, namely my husband. Those of you who know him well know that he spent so much time studying in the last few years that he's still itching to counter it with manual labor outdoors. Perfect! Over the course of two days, we:

• Dug up all the plants and put them in any container we could find (we just about filled up the garage);
• Stuck the tulips in some window boxes on the fence to foil whatever was eating them;
• Went through the beds and pulled out all the rocks, branches, remaining pieces of sod, and weeds (some of which, I swear, have roots that go all the way to China);
• Broke up the soil with a Garden ClawTM borrowed from a co-worker (you know who you are and I promise I'll return it soon!);
• Piled on about 40 wheelbarrows worth of compost and black dirt;
• Tamped it all down;
• Put the perennials back in;
• And took a lot of Advil for sore muscles.

Then I held my breath to see who'd make it through the trauma to re-emerge.

Before and After
Here's how one of the "beds" (if you can call it that) looked before:


And here's how it looked after, with visibly richer soil:
About two weeks later (below), not bad!:
Great exercise, great opportunity to improve the garden, and I hope I never have to do it again!