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.