Pregnant with possibilities

Isn't this exciting?!? Dirt. Lots of dirt. Here's a different view:

Still a lot of dirt. There's actually not much to recommend it at this stage except that it's grass-free dirt.

Once the MulchMaid amends it and plants it, though, it's going to be the beginnings of a dining room screen from the sidewalk. The house is on a corner lot and seems to get twice as much pedestrian traffic. That's great, except when dinner is happening in the dining room. Then people seem compelled to stare straight in as they pass. So the MulchMaids just need a little visual diversion.

Here are a couple of the plants waiting in the wings to be put in. There's an Arbequina olive, and a big pot of Zagreb coreopsis. The MulchMaid might even let the montbretia out of its pot, if it promises not to be too rampant. The little loropetalum chinensis 'Sizzling Pink' is on its way elsewhere...Mr. Mulchmaid is not happy with the foliage color, which was supposed to be purple, not bronze.

Also coming right along and looking quite promising are some young cannas.

The Violette de Bordeaux fig is finally making some lovely long leaves.

The Meyer lemon has come outside for the summer. It lives in the south-facing breakfast room, and bloomed profusely from December to April. But it lost a significant number of leaves and formed no new ones in all that time. Mr. Mulchmaid was concerned that this was virtual suicide, so he took off all the resulting fruit except the two you can see below. Just last week, the first set of new leaves showed!

Last, a Pyracantha "Mojave", covered with white buds. The MulchMaid predicts the flowers will be open and attracting fat bumblebees by this coming weekend.

Tiny flowers for Bloom Day

The only things blooming at Longview Ranch on May 15th are minute.

A tiny dianthus, species long since forgotten, that I've had for years in a trough.

This first helianthemum is quite demure, and appropriately named "The Bride".

But what's this? Color! A orange-red sunrose doing its best to cover the many feet of mulched garden still available for planting.

And this? A bright magenta helianthemum (maybe "Raspberry Dazzler"... I dunno.)

So now you know my secret: whorish, gypsy-colored blooms delight me in tiny doses.

Bamboo U

Longview Ranch has a strangely-shaped backyard: there are two larger areas north and south, with a narrow bottleneck in the center back. This center space is the view through a bay of three windows in the sunny breakfast room where we spend a lot of daylight hours.

Also immediately visible is our eastside neighbor's driveway and house with windows looking directly at our windows. We needed green privacy everywhere in our backyard, but we especially wanted it as quickly as possible there. The solution? Bamboo.

Below is a shot of the backyard area in original condition except the plastic vanes have been removed from the lovely chain link fence. Note the neighbor's teenage pin oak, another factor we need to consider as we garden this area.

The future bamboo planting area in spring 2008.

Above, the fence is painted black - looks better already, right?


A shot of the grass removal in spring 2008. It was so much fun to see how quickly the transformations occurred from this point on.

In our last garden, we had bamboo with no barrier. For years, we worked intensively to keep it under control. This time, we were going to be smart and save ourselves lots of future work: we would have an approved bamboo barrier installed by the landscape crew.


The soil has been added and incorporated into the beds.

Oops, a communication problem with the crew: the bamboo barrier was supposed to be installed before the soil was added. This will mean a lot of extra digging.


These two photos are reversed: below, the barrier is being installed in the three-foot-deep trench dug to hold it. Above, the trench is being backfilled after the barrier is in place.


The finished installation. We started out with the bamboo in a row resulting in minimum visual excitement but maximum privacy coverage.

Late summer 2008. The bamboo just took off - those plants were happy!

Then we went to the Hardy Plant Society's fall sale. We spent some time there talking to a very knowledgeable bamboo grower, who convinced the Mulch Man that the bamboo barrier was not a long-term solution to containing bamboo. He advocated for using a trench system.

The concept is to dig an 18" deep trench at least a foot wide, then fill it with sand or another soft material. Several times a year, you run a tool through the sand to find any shoots that are growing through the sand and you cut them. Apparently, because the bamboo is not encountering the resistance of the barrier, it will stay shallow and easy to locate in the sand. The existing barrier needs to be cut away down to 16-18", so the sand is directly in contact with the soil.

So that's what we did.
Above and below, you can see the sand installed in the trench around the bamboo planting bed.

We moved one plant forward as part of this second phase, since the bamboo was growing so robustly and we already had great coverage.

The jury's out on this method. I'm looking forward to being able to report positively in the future. But I hope that even if it's not the perfect solution, we will at least have bought ourselves a few years of lower maintenance.

As my dear old dad would say "On vera."

Happy Birthday, garden!

We have birthday candles at Longview Ranch! It's been a year since the major trees and shrubs went in, and the pines are celebrating with beautiful spring candles.

Although the three pines are the same species (pinus contorta) it's interesting to see how different each is in needle length, bushiness and even bark surface.


Mr. MulchMaid wishes they were more similar, but I love the differences: it just seems more natural to me to have variations in the same species in a Northwest native planting area. Anyway, I'll sacrifice optimal landscaped class for a touch of random quirkiness any day.

We worked hard keeping all the new trees watered last year. The pines and the three Western red cedars we put in were stressed by their move, and the berms where they were planted drained much faster than the flat areas. I hope they've settled in over winter and won't need quite such an intensive watering schedule this summer. The smaller native plants we added will also help conserve moisture around the tree roots. And, of course, there's mulch.

All the trees will benefit from the nice thick layer of mulch that was spread by the wonder-kid last weekend. But he'd had enough after just one day, so the Mulchmaid is living up to her name and finishing off the rest of the garden beds.

But I'm certainly not complaining. I like that kind of zen garden work, and I especially like the idea that I'm tucking all the trees and plants in under a lightweight spring blanket.

Foliage trumps blooms this week

Blossoms are great, but I'm taking increased pleasure in the foliage I see unfurling and coloring these last few weeks. As soon as it heated up a little bit, there was no holding some plants back.

Particularly fulfilling are the young leaves of an acer circinatum we had planted last spring. It was a lovely multi-trunked specimen that quickly leafed out after planting but the heat of summer was hard on it. Knowing how very small its root ball was (we think it was collected from the wild) we feared for its well-being. We pruned it and kept it well watered and mulched to help it cope, but it was clearly stressed through the year. This year we hope it will fare better and its bright yellow-green leaves with their reddish tips are a hopeful sign.



Also gorgeous are the new leaves of our young eucalyptus (E. pauciflora ssp. debeuzevillei.) The foliage comes out so reddish-orange that it looks almost like flowers from a distance. I chose this variety because it is supposed to be one of the hardiest eucs, and I'm delighted that it did so well over the winter. Based on last year's gains, I expect it to put on a foot or two more height this summer.
Go little tree!

Reprieved ... sort of

The mulch didn't come this past week. But it will be here this week and the order has mysteriously morphed into an entire unit - 7 1/2 cubic yards. So Mr. MulchMaid took pity on the overworked MulchMaid and arranged for some help: a young, strong, (horticulture-major, no less) college dude will distribute most of it on the garden next weekend.

This lets the MulchMaid attend to other important tasks. Lolling in the sun comes immediately to mind. But, no, there's not a lot of time for that, because we have weeds. Lots and lots of weeds. Seems only two weeks ago the beds were scrupulously cleared of unsanctioned green sprouts, but it's spring and they're baaack.

Also, taking pictures of the plants blooming or thriving in the garden. The MulchMaid missed Bloom Day, but that won't stop her from boring her readers with a few bloom-y pictures.

Continue at your own risk...A sweet little rhododendron I'm embarrassed to admit I've lost the tag for.


One of the two fatsia japonicas hopefully making a break for the roof line, and surrounded by millions of schizanthus sprouts that must be removed.


Archtostaphylos uva-ursi looking very happy in some pine duff and the remains of last year's mulch.



Mahonia aquifolium.

By special request

My delighful first (and, so far, only) follower has requested pictures of the house. Since Tikimama is focused on mid-century homes and her blog is so much fun, I'm happy to indulge her. Here are some shots of the house in its early days of our ownership. We have already replaced many of the lollypop-trimmed shrubs shown around around the foundation with shade lovers, including two Fatsia japonicas. I remember them from my California childhood (so that makes them mid-century, Tikimama!) I'm so glad they'll thrive further north. They made it through our winter cold with just a little damage and are coming back like gangbusters, thank goodness. And I clearly need to take some newer front yard pictures!

How mulch is too mulch?

Last year's mulch has done a disappearing act from the bermed areas of the garden. I blamed gravity and the mow-and-blow guy, but apparently it's because it was composted vegetable matter and it's now completely broken down and is busy enriching our soil. As a result, Mr. MulchMaid is having a gob of new mulch delivered this week, and the MulchMaid will get a chance to show her stuff. Since the truck can't get past the driveway, it will all need to be wheelbarrowed into the back yard.

The Mulchman wanted to get a "unit" delivered. I wasn't so sure: 7-1/2 cubic yards is one big-ass pile of mulch to move. We compromised on four yards. That should still keep me out of trouble for the next few weekends.

Spring infatuation

My new darling, Arctostaphylos 'Austin Griffiths', has been blooming for about a month now. I'm in love with the whole manzanita family, but this little charmer catches my eye every time I come home through the back yard. Since I had only planted him in mid-Fall, I covered Austin with frost blanket during our winter cold spell. But I suspect he might have been just fine without any special treatment. He's quite wonderful this spring. I expect my infatuation to mature as Austin does - at eight feet, there'll be plenty to love.

Grass OUT, plants IN!

We couldn't afford to replace the major expanse of chain link fence, so we pulled all the plastic vanes out of it and painted it glossy black. It was a big improvement and made that fence look almost intentional.

The two of us felt comfortable creating a landscape design, but we needed professional muscle to implement concrete and grass removal, soil addition and the planting of larger trees and shrubs. Winterbloom did all that and more, including sourcing many additional plants for us, and mulching after all the initial planting was done.

In the end, we had three main garden areas: first, a Northwest native area in the north backyard, planted with Western red cedars, three pinus contorta, vine maple, cornus Eddy's White Wonder, several rhododendrons, ribes sanguineum, mahonia aquifolium and nervosa, huckleberries, salal and lots of kinnikinnik.

We imagined a tropical fusion area in a narrow part of the yard between the two big areas, and initially planted it with a crape myrtle tree, bamboo and callas we moved from the front yard.

And we had a zonal-denial, Mediterranean area in the sunny south backyard, planted with pampas grass, eucalyptus, pyracantha Mohave, flaxes and a Trachycarpus fortunei palm.

Over that first year, major additions in the south garden included ilex crenata convexa for a low hedge along the house and deck, an arbequina olive, two trachelospermum jasminoides, a negronne fig, ceanothus, and cistus. And in the north garden we added snowberry, mugo pines, several smaller species rhododendrons, and three white camellias for privacy.