Sustainable Gardening Blog

Time to recap the Amazing Combined Border with my next-door neighbor.  It started with the removal of a large Bradford pear on the property line and, in its place, the planting of 5 Arborvitaes ‘Green Giant’.  Then, in a nutshell, everything was removed and rearranged. 

The top photo was taken after the 5 trees were planted but before I’d filled in my neighbor’s side of the border.  The next photo is how it looked in its first year from her deck and finally, a close-up of her border. 

Here are some lessons learned.

1. The correct order of operation is to draw and create the border, THEN insert the plants, starting with
the LARGEST and working down to the groundcover.  I can tell you from my coaching gigs that nobody does it in this order, and it’s no wonder they don’t like the results.  Typically gardens are half-filled with plants in the wrong places and the new design is far better when they’re moved out of the way first. In this case almost all the plants were moved to the holding garden to await the preparation of their new sites.

2. The farther away plants are, the larger they need to be.  Or if the
plants aren’t large, the larger mass they need to be planted in.  Keep
the small stuff closer to the house where you’ll see it.  And if
there’s only one of something it had better be a BIG something.

3. Before drawing any lines, decide on your traffic routes, where paths need to go.  Functionality comes first.

4. Use large curves for the lines of the border, nothing busy.  Stand back
and view the lines as they’ll typically be seen - especially if it’s
from above.  Now’s the time to make that all-important line one that
you like.

5. Once the new bed has been created, smooth the grade before planting anything.  Then after planting, correct the damage (extra dirt here, not enough dirt there) and step gently everywhere to settle the soil before mulching and watering.

6. When creating a border where weeds have flourished for decades, weed first, then cover with 3
inches or more of mulch.  Keep on top of the weeding the first year and subsequent years will be considerably less work.

7. Use anything you can get your hands on to fill up the new border.  Less desirable plants can be moved or given away later as plants fill out.  Especially don’t throw away perfectly good plants just because they’re not your favorites - until you have replacements for them.  (I’ve cringed many a time when shown empty or near-empty yards, whose owners proudly report having gotten rid of the few plants there were.  Half the time it’s the very plants I was about to recommend.)

8. In the case of my neighbor’s backyard, I was frequently warned not to block her two sledding runs into the woods.  Otherwise a few dozen kids would be really unhappy with me. There’s also a good chance they’d just plow into whatever I planted in the way.  So functionality asserts its dominance once again.

Remember when I told you all about this combined border makeover?  Well, with all the late season blooms - rudbeckia, sedum and aster - it’s looking DAMN good to me, and to my neighbor, too.  This is the view from her deck looking toward my garden.  But what I can’t show you is a "before" photo of this border, which is another instance in my continuing saga of before photos not taken. I think it’s because who wants to record something ugly?  Then by the time it occurs to me, the transformation is under way and it’s too late.

Next up, though, is the transformation of my neighbor’s front garden - before and after shots. 

Now if you’re wondering what the hell I’m doing working on my neighbor’s garden, you’re not alone.  (I’m known in these parts as the Constant Gardener.)  Yeah, I’ve got an untreated addiction and there’s no 12-Step program for the disease of gardening.

Readers may remember that it all started with the removal of the hated Bradford pear, which punched quite a hole in this border, but we gardeners call that an opportunity to plant something better.  Like the 5 highly recommended ‘Green Giant’ arborvitaes newly planted here and still flying their orange tags in the before photo.  I can see you all smirking at the notion of "screening" trees lined up in a row, but here’s the deal.  In a Combined Border you don’t have to treat them like cadets; they can be massed naturalistically on both sides of the property line.  How cool is that?  But that’s only the beginning.

My neighbor leapt at the suggestion that we work together to redesign our joint border - because when you see it from our decks, it’s one border, ya know - and then the fun really began.  Well, I may be under-remembering how much work it was but the adrenalin was definitely flowing.  I even got to use my bright yellow (not clear) spray paint to create a nice curvy line on her side to match the one on mine.  I brought the border out to meet up with the huge old stump in her lawn, then moved another, movable stump from somewhere else to join it and act as focal points. 

Next, I replanted all of her shrubs and small trees I’d moved to my holding garden for the duration, and when they didn’t fill up the newly drawn border, I added extras from my own overcrowded garden, a process that’ll probably never end.  Already, since this supposedly "after" photo was taken, the border’s acquired Solomon’s seal woven in amongst the arborvitaes, and a stepping stone path for easy  commuting between the two halves of our joint garden.  One particular empty spot that I deemed in need of a full-grown spirea was miraculously filled with - funny thing - a full-grown spirea given away by someone on the local gardening Yahoo group.  (And if you don’t have one where you live, why not?)

So after I’d totally had my way with someone else’s property, what was the effect on neighborly relations?  Let me answer that by first recalling the prior owners and the poison ivy-infested jungle that was their back yard.  The worst was actually inside, where the couple worked as voodoo practitioners, complete with clients arriving with lists of enemies, an elaborate temple for worship,  and the keeping and sacrificial slaughtering of various animals.  FOR REAL.  Yeah, when we talk about ethnic diversity in this town, we’re so not kidding.  So when this pretty, cheerful public interest lawyer bought the place, moved in and started cleaning up, I knew I’d gotten lucky.

Turns out she tells me she feels lucky, too - and also that her enjoyment of life has been enhanced by having such a pretty garden.  Nice pay-off, that one.  Then she asked how she could continue the look across the rest of her property and is proceeding forthwith to make it all happen. Best of all, I don’t have to fear for my cats’ lives anymore.

[The photos were taken from my deck, with the property line running down the center just to the right of my flowering viburnums. More photos to follow as the border develops.]

You know how writers are always telling us to design our new borders using garden hoses to create the shape?  Ever actually tried it?  The straight-talking reality is that even on the hottest of days, my hose isn’t supple enough for the job, which makes me wonder:  Have these writers ever actually tried it?  But let’s move on.

So what does work?  Because I’m continually tweaking my own borders and creating them for my clients, too, I really needed to know, so I perused the paint department at my local Home Depot and selected the fine Rust-Oleum product on the left, which label declares it to be a "Professional Inverted Marking Paint - Use to highlight…athletic fields and more."  I’d found something like this once before and it worked great - you just walk along like a professional who knows what she’s doing and create a lovely curved line to impress any client.  So I bought up every can on the shelf - 5 of ‘em - because they’re hard to find.

So my neighbor and I were having a great time the other day creating her side of our Amazing Combined Border (photos coming soon to this very blog) and I took out the trusty Rust-Oleum and tried can after can but couldn’t get the damn things to work.  Some kind of goo came out but no actual paint, and no color.  Perplexed and always intimidated by products from the hardware store, I consulted a male, hardware-going friend, who closely examined the can and found a vital piece of fine, fine print at the very bottom, back side of the can.  First a bunch of numbers, naturally, then the word "Clear."

Now you know I was raised right and watch my language, but what the !#@*???  Please tell me how something that’s CLEAR can MARK ANYTHING!  Seriously, Rust-Oleum people, just give me a clue.  In the meanwhile, I’m sticking with your competitor, Krylon’s inverted marking paint "Mark-It" in "bright, bold colors" - yes, that’s the idea!  I found it at a funky little Ace Hardware on Capitol Hill.  Go independents!

In the spirit of full disclosure, this isn’t the first time I’ve had a fiasco involving a bunch of numbers and words in fine print, so you’d think I’d learn.  Okay, I’m learning that Boomer gardeners should have their reading glasses with them at all times, I guess.  And certain paint companies should figure out what the hell they’re producing.

I’m very psyched about my new border, the one you saw earlier with the sod removed to make it larger.

What it was.  A bad case of the twosies.  There were four hydrangeas (two lacecap and two mophead), with scattered astilbe and scattered periwinkle in front of them.  The background, unchanged, includes two viburnum (a lacecap and a snowball), two dogwoods (a native and an Asian), plus a really big mistake, a Bradford pear that’ll blow over any day now. 

What it is now. In the midground are the Hollywood juniper I posted about, the two mophead hydrangeas, seven small nandina and six small pieris.  Along the front are a euonymous ‘Emerald Gaity’, a full-grown carex and a bunch of liriope.  And there are masses of perennials in here, too:  all the astilbes bunched together for impact, and lots of euphorbia amygdaloides.

I’ve always been unhappy with this border.  You all know the feeling.  My main complaint was its lack of evergreens.  So in April I picked up the pieris at Home Depot for $3.33 each.  After a season in the holding area, they’re not a bad start.  Ditto the seven nandina I bought on Ebay for $5 each but probably could have found locally for that price or better.  Including the new juniper for $50, this big improvement only set me back $105.  Having the large evergreen carex, the euonymous and the liriope all stealable from other spots in the garden sure helped.

This is the view from one of my green chairs.  Showing off nicely in the background is a three-year-old Deodor cedar, which I know will get huge but don’t ya love the blue? To its left are more viburnums and dogwoods, plus a bunch of 5′ pieris, all suggested by a nursery’s free designer 20 years ago.  Over the years I’ve mentally thanked that designer hundreds of times, easily.  Back then my entire knowledge of shrubs began and ended with azaleas.