Perennial Blog

Published on September 9, 2017 on www.czechgardener.com

Hallo for the third time today!

The last part of my 2 months work resume is the “Lavander hill” project and new path too.

Lavander hill was originally place for a bench with the view over the pond from small hill……..But later on it changed to a waste area, partly covered with pond liner (mostly under layer of soil), some volunteer seedlings of trees, weeds, invasive Miscanthus sp. and weeds.

I really enjoyed the potential of the small hill, because this garden is nearly totally flat, so any elevation (as well as sunken areas) are real blessing.

After some observation I realized, I should have enough rocks to build up little dry wall – “dry wall” is called the wall made of stones or rocks without using any concrete for stabilizing. So the layer among the stones consist of mixture of sand and soil. These dry walls are excellent for wildlife (wish there are lizards living here).

Plus you can plant the gaps with lots of small succulents and creeping plants – from moss phloxes (Phlox subulata etc.), hens and chicks (Sempervivum sp.), stonecrop (Sedum sp.), thyme (Thymus sp.), Cerastium, beardtongue (Penstemon) to many others.

This will be the sunniest and driest place in the garden, so I used most of the pebbles from around the pool, small stones and rocks, sand and corroding limestone to make really drained place for xeriscape garden (dry arid garden with no watering). Quite some soil removal had to be done too, rototilling too……

Simply that’s why I called it “lavander hill”, because lavenders love sunny and drier conditions and they’ll be planted here in some assortment (don’ t have the plants yet). Dry area close to the pond (and potential sunken garden next to it) add real dramatic scale to the garden.

The area is area is ready for planting, it’ s weed free, but I don’t have many plants for this spot now and also not enough sand for the mulch (plan on 10 cm, so 4″ of sand layer or even more). Some step stones for easier access for weeding and maintenance have to added too.

The last bigger project that started is making the paths – so access to the two main entrance doors. The paths and tiles (or bricks) have moved all directions, because they were laid on the thin layer of sand, but no gravel at all. The clay & freeze just lifted all of that and it really didn’t look inviting…So far I did about one half of the pathway. With using paver base (no gravel is required) it was really fast! Except the soil work (again)! I had to level the area, scratch lots of soil off, measure and it was quite difficult to catch any height of the surroundings – part of the path is on the natural slope, but the trouble was waving area all around (everything had it’s own height – garage door, waved tiled patio, door, soil levels on both sides). Of course I had to fix the gutter and drainage ditch, and still it seems I may need to dig big drainage hole filled with gravel/concrete pieces. All of this was more then one week of work and preparation, but it looks really good and the best thing of it all is : the both areas along the path can be weeded and make ready for flowers! Actually one narrow bed along the house will belong to the “flowering vineyard” – it is actually the same line at the house, but interrupted by garden steps to the patio. So it will follow very similar planting scheme (Salvia, Agastache, Coreopsis Iris etc).