All in a Week's Work
June 13, 2011
One of several perks of Kirk's new position at the hospital is that he works in a smaller department, and was therefore able to get a second week of vacation during the summer (due to decreased competition for the popular dates). His second week off miraculously coincided with the week that Glenn was able to come and work on the back yard with the Bobcat and actual expertise, so the two of them worked together to get the raised beds in place. Meanwhile, I got to go to work and return home to enjoy significant, near-magical progress every day. For example, here's what I saw Monday, and I was so excited I ran in the house to grab the camera:
So it took about a day to screw together the 2x12s to form the edges for the raised beds you see here. The sawing and building part was actually pretty quick, but getting the boxes into place was another issue. See Kirk digging? He had to move just about all the dirt that was roughed into place because it wasn't in quite the right spot. Then he had to wrestle with the wood to get it all square and level, etc. I helped with the finessing when I got home each day, but he did the bulk of the muscle-work here.
In case you are wondering about materials, the wood is 2x12 fir that (back in April and early May) we painted with an organic wood preserver called Lifetime Wood Treatment. It's apparently made out of mushrooms and other natural stuff...we'll see if it works. It did turn the boards into a nice silvery gray as it dried, and that makes them look like they've been here forever. All the gray stone is just crushed stone that will be covered up by brick (eventually).
The wood for the raised beds here is about 10 percent of the total beds of the whole design. Getting the others in place the rest of the week went somewhat more quickly, due in part to having conquered the learning curve and in part to not having to move any more soil around. For the rest of the beds, the soil was backfilled AFTER the boards were in place.
Speaking of the design, this would be a good place to share that.
Flashback: Fall 2010
We had been kicking around ideas for the garden almost since we moved to Newburyport over Christmas of 2009. Even from the first time we looked at the house with the realtor (the highly-recommended Ann Marie Pinet), we knew that there were things in the backyard that would have to go. The weird center island and water feature, for example (named "Atlantis" by our next door neighbors, who apparently had been making fun of it for years):
This overgrown disaster used to have a whole oak tree in it and included lighting and a fountain (the wiring for which we had to pull out for miles). It was in the dead center of the yard: bad feng shui to say the very least. This was, thankfully, demolished by the professional portion of our landscaping team.
Anyway, I'm not really sure how to explain our design process. We would walk around the yard and talk and look at books, and we share an aesthetic sense that gets us to common ground almost immediately. So with inspiration that included the gardens at Old Salem, a fantastic book called The New Traditional Garden by Michael Weishan, and a pretty extensive google image search, we were ready to try to draw.
We started by drawing in permanent marker the things that wouldn't change: the house, the garage, the workshop in the back, the property line. That part was easy, but with the giant blank spot on the paper in front of us, we kind of froze. Until, that is, Kirk had the brilliant idea to bring in from the garage an old window (previously used as one of our cold frame covers) to put down over the graph paper. From there, we drew on the glass with dry erase pens, and that freed us to try things and erase, discuss, try again. From there I think we settled on the final design in a couple hours. Transferred back onto the paper, we have this:
This photo is of the plan where it is currently hanging (for reference) in the garage. As you can see, it's a little worse for wear. The parts shaded in red are brick; the parts that are tan are gravel paths, and the concentric "Cs" are the planting beds. The idea is based on old formal garden mazes. It also borrows a bit from the potager at Villandry, so when our friends call it Versailles, it's maybe not so far off (give or take several acres and a palace).
This is a detail of the quadrant that Kirk is working on in the first photo of this post. To the left in pencil are the outlines of a shed (lower left) and some long planting beds for berry bushes. These will likely be redesigned because we plan to put a gate in the fence nearby so the kids can easily play with the neighbors, whom we've gotten to know much better since we drew this back in the fall. It wouldn't be very neighborly to have kids always running into raspberry prickles whenever they come to play, so we'll need to give it some more thought when we get closer to that section.
One of several perks of Kirk's new position at the hospital is that he works in a smaller department, and was therefore able to get a second week of vacation during the summer (due to decreased competition for the popular dates). His second week off miraculously coincided with the week that Glenn was able to come and work on the back yard with the Bobcat and actual expertise, so the two of them worked together to get the raised beds in place. Meanwhile, I got to go to work and return home to enjoy significant, near-magical progress every day. For example, here's what I saw Monday, and I was so excited I ran in the house to grab the camera:
So it took about a day to screw together the 2x12s to form the edges for the raised beds you see here. The sawing and building part was actually pretty quick, but getting the boxes into place was another issue. See Kirk digging? He had to move just about all the dirt that was roughed into place because it wasn't in quite the right spot. Then he had to wrestle with the wood to get it all square and level, etc. I helped with the finessing when I got home each day, but he did the bulk of the muscle-work here.
In case you are wondering about materials, the wood is 2x12 fir that (back in April and early May) we painted with an organic wood preserver called Lifetime Wood Treatment. It's apparently made out of mushrooms and other natural stuff...we'll see if it works. It did turn the boards into a nice silvery gray as it dried, and that makes them look like they've been here forever. All the gray stone is just crushed stone that will be covered up by brick (eventually).
The wood for the raised beds here is about 10 percent of the total beds of the whole design. Getting the others in place the rest of the week went somewhat more quickly, due in part to having conquered the learning curve and in part to not having to move any more soil around. For the rest of the beds, the soil was backfilled AFTER the boards were in place.
Speaking of the design, this would be a good place to share that.
Flashback: Fall 2010
We had been kicking around ideas for the garden almost since we moved to Newburyport over Christmas of 2009. Even from the first time we looked at the house with the realtor (the highly-recommended Ann Marie Pinet), we knew that there were things in the backyard that would have to go. The weird center island and water feature, for example (named "Atlantis" by our next door neighbors, who apparently had been making fun of it for years):
This overgrown disaster used to have a whole oak tree in it and included lighting and a fountain (the wiring for which we had to pull out for miles). It was in the dead center of the yard: bad feng shui to say the very least. This was, thankfully, demolished by the professional portion of our landscaping team.
Anyway, I'm not really sure how to explain our design process. We would walk around the yard and talk and look at books, and we share an aesthetic sense that gets us to common ground almost immediately. So with inspiration that included the gardens at Old Salem, a fantastic book called The New Traditional Garden by Michael Weishan, and a pretty extensive google image search, we were ready to try to draw.
We started by drawing in permanent marker the things that wouldn't change: the house, the garage, the workshop in the back, the property line. That part was easy, but with the giant blank spot on the paper in front of us, we kind of froze. Until, that is, Kirk had the brilliant idea to bring in from the garage an old window (previously used as one of our cold frame covers) to put down over the graph paper. From there, we drew on the glass with dry erase pens, and that freed us to try things and erase, discuss, try again. From there I think we settled on the final design in a couple hours. Transferred back onto the paper, we have this:
This photo is of the plan where it is currently hanging (for reference) in the garage. As you can see, it's a little worse for wear. The parts shaded in red are brick; the parts that are tan are gravel paths, and the concentric "Cs" are the planting beds. The idea is based on old formal garden mazes. It also borrows a bit from the potager at Villandry, so when our friends call it Versailles, it's maybe not so far off (give or take several acres and a palace).
This is a detail of the quadrant that Kirk is working on in the first photo of this post. To the left in pencil are the outlines of a shed (lower left) and some long planting beds for berry bushes. These will likely be redesigned because we plan to put a gate in the fence nearby so the kids can easily play with the neighbors, whom we've gotten to know much better since we drew this back in the fall. It wouldn't be very neighborly to have kids always running into raspberry prickles whenever they come to play, so we'll need to give it some more thought when we get closer to that section.
hey there again. i was just showing my neighbor (whose front yard is full of raised beds) and her first question (and implied suggestion) is "are they putting in an irrigation system? because they'll want it."
ReplyDeleteWe gave it some thought, because of course it would be the smart move to lay that all in when the bobcat was here. Sadly, we are already at the upper reaches of our budget, so our irrigation plan (such as it is) is a little on the Amish side. We have a faucet at the back door that we plan to run a clever series of soaker hoses from to snake around the beds, probably rotating them around the quadrants each day (like moving it once a day...not four times a day!). This will be labor-intensive, but since I don't have to work in the summer, there won't be too much neglect. Also, our old garden was about half the planting area of this one, and was farther away from the faucets...a pain during drought, but doable.
ReplyDeleteDoes it sound like rationalizing to say that spending time moving hoses will give us more familiarity with the condition of the plants, and that watering by hand gives us more control? Hopefully there's not too much wishful thinking here.
Oh, we're also planning on attaching some rain barrels to the back gutters fir extra watering capacity. That's like priority Q right now, though.