Raised Garden - Part 2

It's been a busy, busy week around here. Not sure if that was what my husband had in mind when he said he would take some time off to "help me in the garden".  But it's been time well spent as we've made great progress on the whole spring gardening thing and especially our new raised vegetable garden. As I told you here, I wanted to build a new garden behind the garage. It's been years since I've had the space and time for a real garden and now is the time to indulge in that favorite of pastimes - gardening.

As a recap, this is what we started with - 6 yards of top soil hastily spread over the general area before the winter hit. Not exactly a haven for fresh greens.

We got busy last weekend and built the retaining walls to hold in the garden. The lot is on a bit of a slope and if we hadn't done this the soil would have washed away over time. Plus it makes it look so neat and tidy, don't ya think?

And my husband says "are we done yet"? Oh no, dear. There's still lots to do. Like shovel this small pile of dirt onto it (as another 6 yards of triple mix are delivered). And move that old fence to create a border. The old fence was originally on the lot line at the back of the property. But the town annexed some land and we landed up with a few extra feet, leaving the fence in the middle of the yard. We've taken down a few sections, keeping a couple in the middle of the back perennial border for interest.

My plan is to continue the perennial bed on the other side of the fence so that it looks like it is in the middle of an extra large border. The fence is too cool  to just throw out - covered in lichens and moss and the wood is beautifully weathered.

We've used it to fence off a bit of the side yard, creating a barrier for visiting dogs (both kids have dogs they bring when visiting). And we used it to create an "entrance" to the raised vegetable garden.

Yes, there are things growing in the garden - garlic, chives, shallots and parsley. Plus some arugula seeds were planted on Monday. As you can see, we cheated a bit and put the posts in using those cool and convenient post spikes - metal spikes with a bracket to hold a post. SOOOO much easier than digging a hole and sinking the post. Plus if the fence does fall apart (after all it's at least 50 years old), then it will be easy to remove it. We still have to add an arbour to the entrance which will be planted with either a grapevine or climbing "New Dawn" roses and clematis. Can't decide. But since the arbour isn't there yet, I don't have to make up my mind right this minutes.

And just because this post isn't long enough or photo heavy at all, I wanted to show you this cute vignette I created in what we call the "garage bed" - the bit of garden which borders the garage. This old bottle was found in the attic of the garage in our old house and the branch came down from one of the trees in the winter. (It's an homage to gardening friend RoseMary who has beautiful driftwood pieces intertwined with her clematis). That's an old clematis growing behind it.

This is so pretty I had to show you, even if I haven't top dressed it and the daffodils (on the right) are almost done.....I wanted to show you the beauty of these grape hyacinths, the variegated hosta and the yellow of the tulips. Yes, the birdbath is crooked. The birds don't seem to mind. Plan is to put some bricks under it to level it off. Another project for another day.


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