Maintaining a Garden Through Time

Category: Summer | Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2011 7:20 pm

Last week-end we are took out an Alberta Spruce in the front yard. It was one of the first trees we planted on this city lot after we moved in. It had been a little live Christmas tree that had moved from rental to our current home all those years ago. As Alberta Spruce tend to do with age, it repeatedly tried to revert to the big spruce tree that its genes were made up of. It was time for it to be removed. As we deal with the needles and pitch that go with its removal I began thinking of all the changes our front yard has had through the years.

Alberta Spruce trying to go to its natural form ( photo / image / picture from Jewell's Garden )

We moved to our little home in 1983. It was basically a bare lot with a lot of blackberry brambles and some very old plantings of rhubarb, horseradish, elephant garlic, autumn crocus. We found a few other gems hiding in places around the yard that hadn't been mowed more or less kept up for a few seasons. Pulling brambles and mowing the yard we discovered several fruit and nut trees. Before long the yard became a grassy oasis perfect for children running around. We had an asphalt drive way laid and wire fences are planted with ivy to become hedges that surround most of the yard. The neighbors plant baby fir trees on the south side of our lot.

The front yard had a huge rambling rose that took over half of the front yard and not much else was there. We removed the rose bush by cutting it at the base of a ten inch trunk. Its sprouts are still around. On that side of the yard a four-way cherry is planted shortly after the removal of the rose.

old rambling rose ( photo / image / picture from Jewell's Garden )

Fast forward a decade and the back yard has ducks in the orchard, garden beds close to the house for veggies and berries. The front yard had two more semi-dwarf fruit trees: granny smith apple and a four-way sweet cherry tree. Interlaken grapes stretched across the south side of the house. The fir trees block the neighbors and begin shading a portion of the lot. The tree in the front yard provides cherries that are wonderful and a neighborhood gathering place during the first days of summer. The front yard changes from grass to flower beds to grass again as the cherry tree changes the microclimate of the front yard. Plants come and go, but the hellebores have found a home they like and provide starts for beds through out the yard. The apple tree also adds summer shade, but the apples are not quite right for our climate. I've never figured out the right time for picking the apples and they often provide fodder for the birds in the winter and spring. Salal, lilies, Pacific bleeding hearts and deer ferns provide a little oasis beneath its limbs that shade the walkway to the front door.

I have had a love affair with heather during the last decades.

White heather - the honey bees love it ( photo / image / picture from Jewell's Garden )

I love its seasonal flowers, especial in winter. I've learned it can get shrub high as it starts to cover the kitchen windows. I've learned that heavy trimming can kill it. One heather goes and new varieties are introduced until I have heather blooming throughout the seasons. Path ways between them are wooly thyme, then Irish moss and finally filled in totally with California poppies. Rock borders are placed around brick pavers as they are placed year each year until they wrap around the house.

Another few years pass and the cherry tree in the front yard is gone.

I am told there is no such thing as a semi-dwarf cherry tree and now I believe it. Maintaining the four graphed cherry varieties and keeping it off the house was too much work. The children who used to pick its sweet cherries are growing up fast too. The cherry tree's twenty-four inch trunk is left. It is about a meter tall and is drilled for mason bees. A shade garden with hellebores, bleeding hearts, a variety of ferns and woodland plants had formed a bed under its branches. The woodland plants had a bit of a shock having their leaves unprotected during the summer months.

first spring after murdering the cherry tree ( photo / image / picture from Jewell's Garden )

Two Japanese maples are slowly adding shade back to this part of the yard. A hardy hibiscus and heathers flourished with the added light.

now with new paths and a few more years added to the Japanese maples ( photo / image / picture from Jewell's Garden )

Unfortunately so did some weeds. With such a large bed it was time this year to reestablish some sort of paths to get in and maintain the area. That part of the yard has once again had some transformations.

With the removal of the Alberta Spruce it is clear how big the heathers on that side of the yard have become.

Oh, my! The heathers are almost as tall as me! ( photo / image / picture from Jewell's Garden )

Time to do some weeding, trimming and path laying here too. Volunteer heather plants and gayfeather bulbs need some readjusting to their placement. Ivy hedges need a good trimming. Gardens are ever changing. Once I always felt that I had a hard time getting a plant to grow and prosper. Now I weed plants that I would have loved to have bought or had given to me a few decades ago. Like me once a plant has found a home they are happy and prosper there.

Bye-bye Alberta Spruce.... new place to plant? ( photo / image / picture from Jewell's Garden )

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Comments

carolyn keiper wrote on Thu Jul 14, 2011 8:09 pm:

Lots of changes over the years, Jewell. Thanks for the time capsule tour.

Kay wrote on Fri Jul 15, 2011 12:37 am:

I enjoyed your garden walk through time. I have never seen an Alberta do that!

Bernieh wrote on Fri Jul 15, 2011 1:57 pm:

It's always a joy to see a garden develop over time and I've enjoyed reading how yours has changed and transformed over the years.

Jewell wrote on Fri Jul 15, 2011 4:01 pm:

Carolyn and Bernieh having to take out the spruce did take me back. I even got the albums out to see the changes. The garden has gotten fuller and as my hubby commented so have we :)

Kay, I have planted several of the Albrta spruce, because of a beautiful row of them along the proprty line o f an old home in the neighborhood. That inspirationtional row reverted several years ago and is now a row
of 30 foot tall spruce. My others are still well behaved, but a neighbors is looking like it is getting ready to bolt. Plants do seem to have their own minds sometimes.

sewNsow wrote on Thu Jan 19, 2012 11:32 pm:

Jewel,Your garden is lovely. The picture of Japanese Maple is so pretty.
Doris AKA sewNsow

Tooty2shoes wrote on Sat Feb 04, 2012 3:45 pm:

Yup had to cut one down that was planted over our septic tank and the roots grew into the lines. In it's place I put a Roady that is orange in color.
You have some neat looking gardens.

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