Gardening for me

The next step was to list everything we wanted to be able to do in that area.  The kids do play a bit in that area, but mostly it's just as families arrive or leave.  Our backyard is the real kid space.  So the plan needed to allow for occasional heavy traffic, but not constant traffic.  My kids like to plan spaces, so I offered each of the a large section that they could decided what to do with.  

I've always wanted some sort of a seating area so that I could sit and read a book. Our house number is on the side of the garage, which is a long way from the curb (over 30 meters ).  It would be nice to add house numbers somewhere near the road.  My Mom gave me a sundial, that looks great in my living room, but really should find a home outside.  And that was about all I came up with.

In the last few years, I've become allergic to grass,  From May until whenever the grass dies in the summer drought, allergies make me miserable.  I may not be able to get rid of all the grass in the world, but I really wanted to plan the whole yard without using any lawn.

It didn't sound like the function list was going to make it easy to plan 100 meters of garden, but it was a place to start.

Fortunately, my family was planning to spend a week at Naramata Centre  in the summer.  I signed up for a course on eco-garden design.  I had almost 15 hours on my own to research, plan and dream about gardening.  My classmates all had their own gardening challenges.  We shared books, ideas and some of the many resources brought by our instructor, Joanna Clark.  She showed us the techniques for planning a garden, and gave us lots of time to work on our gardens.  

Now, I was faced with a long, narrow piece of paper that still defied my imagination on what to do with it.  Joanne, gave us ideas on how to get started.  First, describe the environment.  

"Our home has an unusual front yard.  It's about 1 meter (3 feet) wide by the road, and about 5 meters (15 ft) near the house.  In between is over 30 meters (100 ft) that starts with a dry, sunny spot on the west and ends in a soggy shady section on the east end of the yard.  "

It turned out that I would have to plan for just about every possible micro-climate for my location.  Now I had a long, narrow piece of land that had climate challenges.  I wasn't sure the first step was much of an improvement.

I've always loved gardens, but I've never been a really dedicated gardener.

When it was time to grow a vegetable garden, I read different approaches until I found a book that only wanted one hour a week for a vegetable garden.  Now that was for me.  We've used variations on that method to grow vegetables in our backyard (year around) for over 10 years now.  In the spring and fall, there's usually one week when I spend most of a weekend clearing and getting the garden ready for the next set of vegetables.  But I rarely spend even an hour a week.  We still get a bountiful harvest of what we eat most (peas, lettuce, tomatoes, herbs and kale).

Our home has an unusual front yard.  It's about 1 meter (3 feet) wide by the road, and about 5 meters (15 ft) near the house.  In between is over 30 meters (100 ft) that start with a dry, sunny spot and end in a soggy shady section.  It was mostly grass when we moved in with a couple of small, gardens that had only been created in the last 3 months.  Nothing was established.

I've never liked that yard, but it has always defeated me when I tried to come up with plans.  Before we had kids, I wanted to tear out all the grass and just plant wildflower seeds all along the strip.  I did manage to dig up two more sections and put some plants in them.  But as our family grew, the garden got neglected.

As of the summer of 2006, the front 'garden' section has lots of weeds, including the very invasive horsetail.  The section closest to the house is very overgrown and the English ivy appears to be winning the battle with the horsetail.  The lawn in between, has both moss and horsetail.  How do you even start to create an attractive garden in this space?