As requested by my friend Ruth, here are a few details on how this garden grew together:
Starting with a 8X13M lot full of weeds and clay, thousands of gallons of sweat made it what it is today.
November 1986:
...the bare bones! Typical "lawn" mainly consisting of wiregrass and very little excitement: no butterflies, noi bees, no wild life!
I started by digging four 4'X8' beds for vegetables and planted some fruit trees while overhearing my old neighbor "wondering about how many bodies were buried in there..." Fortunately, summer came with enough tomatoes to share and they "buried" the war hatchet for the rest of their days.
I do not have pictures of the original four beds but it would have looked like a smaller version of:
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| Early spring version! |
I added some bananas on the side for good old days' sake and a couple of small ponds for the neighborhood kids to enjoy watching frogs:
By adding some every year, I slowly filled the lot, added lots of flowers and changed its look:
Now, the house is invisible most of the year but the garden clearly attracts all kinds of wildlife:
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| Not a great picture but, as you can tell, mummy was not going to give me time to compose a better one. |
With my back getting older, I started raised beds about five years ago, first in wood then in blocks:
... planting vegetables in the beds and flowers/herbs in the walls themselves with ivey and other vines hiding the concrete as much as possible.
Now this is what drivers see:
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| The Crepe Myrtles were planted by the original owner and looked like matchsticks when we moved in. |
