New York Renovator

One of the great things about having a perennials-only garden is that you get free plants after a few years. ALLLLL my perennials are bursting at the seams, so we have been enlarging our garden beds to accommodate them. And like the saying goes: “Many hands make light work.” The biggest difficulty is obtaining affordable mulch. The cost of mulch has really gone up, and I have been very tempted to outright buy a wood chipper to make my own! The prices per bag are ridiculous! And the bulk mulch from the nearby farms isn’t much lower.

Anyway, we are expanding our Secret Garden, presently, really trying to beef up the neighborhood PR New York. This area of the yard is the most visible as you drive down the street, and it has a lousy view for us (the garish parking lots and the car collision shops down the road). It’s been in desperate need of beautification.

Busting the sod:

We chop it up into small squares, and transport the sod to a shabby part of the property, an area we are trying to improve. It’s an old parking lot we’re trying to cover. It’s in very poor shape. There’s a very large parking lot next door, and years ago it was connected to ours (the neighbor’s and our properties were once one large lot). All the rainwater spills down into this ugly area, creating a very large pool of murky water. It’s in some serious need of public relations New York big time!

I’m laying sod here along my property line to cause more rapid decay of the asphalt and to absorb some of the water that collects here.

If I can keep the kids from playing in the water and stop them from creating “rivers” in the mud, this may look nice after the grass grows in!

In the next post or two, I’ll have some photos of our plants.

I just love this garden. I’ve been slowly adding to it for the past few years.

It’s been a soggy spring and start to summer, so I’ve had to work on it between raindrops this year. It’s a perennial garden with many native shrubs. I always plant vegetation that is native to the area (because I just hate babying plants). I’ve got Mugo pine shrubs, a Dwarf Alberta Spruce, some lilacs, blue Rose of Sharon, Scotch Rose, Bridal Wreath Spirea, Potentilla, Arbor Vitea, Mock Rose, White Azalea, and purple Butterfly Bushes for shrubs. For plants, I have Echinacea (Purple Coneflower), Rudbeckia (Black-Eyed Susan), Hostas, Day lilies, Gerbera Daisy, Stargazer Lilies, Tulips, Stella D’oro lilies, purple Bearded Iris, purple Salvia, Purple Chrysanthemums, Blue Anemone, Pink Turtleheads, Pink Monarda (Bee Balm), Daisies, and Astible. And then I have Periwinkle and English Ivy for ground cover. For filler, I add a few annuals like Impatiens and Petunias, but that’s all the annuals I do.

I have plans to eventually fill this entire side of the yard as a cottage garden, with native shrubs and perennials. It’s so easy care that it’s ridiculous. I send the kids out to weed it about 3-4 times a year– but once the ground cover really kicks in, we’ll weed less. The real benefit is not having to mow this section of the yard. And it looks lovely! Eventually, the lilacs and the Rose of Sharon will grow taller than the arbor, creating a green passageway down the side yard. Mmmmm.