The Enclosure Garden

Since fencing off the section of yard that includes the greenhouse and path I've come to think of this space as The Enclosure, and thusly when it was time to put in the bed between the house and the path I naturally termed it The Enclosure Garden.

The plants used are from various sources, but mainly Burpee courtesy of the Christmas gc from Mom and Dad, and the local garden center/hardware store. It's an addiction for real and the only way to keep myself from buying plants is to not need to go there for anything. So the plants are an apricot rose called 'Lady of Shallott,' some bright bluish-purple Lithodora, Borage, Forget-me-Nots, peachy Lilies, a green and burgundy-leaved Heuchera (even though I swore I'd never buy a Heuchera), Violas in azure and white, the Asclepius Incarnata 'Ice Ballet' in white, a Gardenia called 'Swan Maiden,' a white Anemone, and purple spires of Salvia. You can't see everything in the photo because some of it is very small (especially the Asclepius, which will tower and spread and fill that back right corner), and in the case of the Borage and Forget-Me-Nots they're just seeds as of yet.

It's a weird spot, to be sure. Just this little strip of grass (moss, let's be real) between the house and the path, and a complete throw-away space if not used for something. The back of the house is also far less attractive than the front, the contractor not having considered it necessary to put any interesting features where the driver-by would not see them. As it is this is one of the sunniest parts of the garden, but also one of the wettest, so the soil had to be re-worked a bit. I dug out, spadeful by spadeful as with the path, down to a depth of about 4-6" removing the hard clay and sod. I then refilled it with garden topsoil (two and a half bags full), and two bags of manure, which I dug in well with my new pitchfork. I decided not to add grit or sand to this, and I'm hoping I won't pay for it later, especially as the centerpiece of the bed is the rose bush, and they do not like to keep their feet wet. When I dig the rose in, which is staying in it's pot this year, I've decided, then I will likely add some drainage just to that area. The reason I've held off on putting it in this year is that it's very happy in the pot so far and I want it to establish really well in there, and I'll plant it out in the Fall so it can get established before the first frost. The other thing is that this Spring is still going back and forth in temperature wildly, and I'm not convinced that we won't have a frosty morning yet, so the rose goes into the Greenhouse on cold nights. I'm willing to risk the rest.

(The naughty Puppy in pre-chaos mode)

After the bed was prepared I placed everything out in their pots and plugs, and lived with it for a few days, fiddling here and there and keeping the plants watered as necessary. I also bought a trellis, and was disappointed to find that the hardware store didn't have trellis clips for me to afix it to the siding on the house with. This turned out to be serendipitous though, as when I got the trellis home it wedged perfectly between two window frames and was held securely in place just between those and being lightly entrenched in the soil. I also added my blue Scabius 'Pincushion Plant' into the bed, which has overwintered outside in a pot marvelously. The last thing I did, after planting everything in, was to put up the woven edging as seen above. This has multiple purposes; to keep the soil from sliding out onto the path, to look nice, and to deter a very naughty puppy who likes to walk through my beds and chew on plants. The problem with the woven edging is that it turned out not to be nearly as pliable as I had anticipated and, well, the bed is curved. So I went out into the yard, cut some stakes from fallen limbs that weren't too wispy and weren't too wide, and pounded those into the bed at strategic points to force the edging to curve around them. Last, but not least, I tied the sections together and to the stakes with hemp twine recovered from the Shade Garden outline, which is now covered in weed barrier fabric.