Today we're celebrating the one year anniversary of our new landscape! It's a good time to take stock and confirm that the garden is growing and thriving. According to Rebecca Kolls of Rebecca's Garden, in the first year perennials sleep, the second year they creep, and the third year they leap. In this post I'm providing a one-year report, comparing against Landscaping: Six Month Report and Landscaping: Finished.
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| The heuchera and grasses continue to thrive (without the summer weeds) |
In November we contracted a monthly landscaping maintenance service. We had let the garden grow naturally for the first six months, so it was quite overgrown when I returned from Alaska in October. We could identify most plants from the planting schedule, but didn't know whether others were weeds or plants from a wild flower mix of annuals. We decided to hire professionals to get the yard back on track. They do a great job, and I've been learning from them. The garden is fairly low maintenance (once you know what is required), so in time we may switch to a quarterly service and do more of the weeding and grooming ourselves.
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| The succulent rock garden is filling in |
The landscape was designed as a wildlife garden with keystone plants for food and shelter. We added a Bird Buddy bird feeder (with camera), and continue to provide a hummingbird feeder in the side yard and a terracotta bird bath with fresh water daily. We get many visitors to all three. We've also had visiting deer, coyote, turkey, skunk, and neighborhood cats (who are very interested in our bird visitors).
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| California poppies and grasses line the path to the junipers |
The grass clumps have gained in size (they were started as spindly plugs last spring, and cut back in the winter). The California poppy are much larger this year and back in bloom (several bloomed throughout the winter)! A few pink Clarkia continue to bloom as well. I miss our big legacy trees, but it is exciting to see a couple of small Japanese maples that are thriving and just about to leaf out. The remaining trees (oak, liquid amber, prunus, and juniper) seem to be enjoying more room and the boost of irrigation water plus winter rains.
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| The grass mounds by the steps to the lower yard are more established |
The "shrub fence" is still a distant dream, but most of the new shrubs are still thriving (we did lose several, so they'll need to be replanted after we investigate why they died). When Mako and Dakota the Huskies came to live with us last year, we wondered if we should rethink the fence at some point. Not in the budget at this time, but worth thinking about in case a new Husky joins our family!
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| The shrubs to the right of the gate are slightly taller! |
The shrubs by the utilitarian gate are still pretty small (you can almost see them to the right of the gate and left of the tree). They have put on a little height and the two deciduous shrubs have leafed out. All three should eventually provide a privacy screen for the downstairs courtyard. The fall and winter leaves and berries have been cleaned up and moved to the compost bin.
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| The plants along the front walk have really filled in! |
After reviewing the new landscape, I am satisfied about the progress made over the last year. Most of the original plants are still alive, and are growing and thriving. So far we haven't taken steps to make changes or additions to the garden, preferring instead to get to know what we have and how to care for it. But we've been talking about a few projects, such as planting dwarf maple trees in containers and adding some plants to the rock garden. I still want to plant the raised bed with dye plants or herbs, and like the idea of planting some "crops" here and there (it was so much fun to harvest cherry tomatoes in February). I'm also content to enjoy the current garden as perennials move into the "creep" stage of their development!
