Sustainable Gardening Blog

I asked Renee Macalino Rutledge, editor of CalFinder (a free referral service for remodeling contractors) what information home gardeners should know about her industry, and got this handy list of situations in which we should hire someone who knows more than we do, and these inspiring photos.  Thanks, Renee!

1.  Water features.  This first example is one where people are tempted to do the work themselves, with mixed results, to say the least.  I’ve watched neighbors take apart and totally redo their ponds because of leaks and know that it’s no fun.  I made enough mistakes creating my dry streambed and it’s not nearly as complicated as ponds and waterfalls. Renee reminds us that it’s not just all that digging, but knowing what kind of liner to use (waterproof, with watertight seals), which filter to choose, and even which plants to put in the pond, an extra service of some pond-installers. 

2. Gazebos.  Construction?  Clearly not a DIY option for most of us but man, wouldn’t we all love one of these?  Wonder what that beauty on the left cost.  But back to our potential contractor.  I’m told that they can suggest different types and help us pick the right shape and size, and style. (I’d grab that portfoliio and start drooling at the options.)  And someone who knows what they’re doing can add electricity for us, or plumbing for an outdoor kitchen.    

3. Decks and patios.  Again, no argument from me here, but Renee suggests finding someone who’s "just as passionate about decks as you are about gardens."  Well, that’s a cool idea. "Laying the wood and putting together a sturdy, flawless structure takes patience and fine craftsmanship," Renee writes, and it reminds me of the high school science teacher who built my current deck and the beautiful work he did.  He was SO proud of it, he made no bones of his displeasure at the vines I quickly attached along the edge - it was spoiling the view of his deck!

4. Stone pathways.  Now here’s where I’d be tempted to do it myself - and have.  But as she warns, "A walkway must withstand heavy foot traffic, machinery, and the wear and tear of the elements."  I’m a big proponent of garden paths, even if they’re only mulch (though stone is awesome!)  Paths are so inviting, and they let you get to your plants so you can tend them without harming plants you might otherwise step on.  True, stone is expensive, but these days there are some less expensive alternatives that look great, and options include slip-resistance, interlocking pavers that can easily be replaced. and more.  Then we get to choose from various patterns for different effects - herringbone or another classic pattern, or even a custom design.

5. Retaining walls.  Another beautiful garden feature that I wouldn’t attempt myself, unless it’s 6 inches or shorter.  Anything taller  takes engineering, after all, to figure out what Renee calls the "mounting lateral pressure of backfill and possible hydrostatic pressure of water.:"  Right, that stuff.  But when they’re done well and especially with natural materials, man, do they add a lot to the garden.  Wish more people had them. 

6.  Outdoor sheds/studios.  Ever seen those charming little buildings in garden magazines?  They’re painted in cool colors, and art or hanging baskets give them a bit of personality (not like the plain-Jane one below).  Of course Home Depot sells those kits for sheds and I suppose I could pay some handyman to put one together for me but how good could it look?  It sounds so much better when Renee talks about custom-designed sheds, studios, even guest quarters.  (A boon to guest-hostess relations, no doubt.)  In my case I hired someone to turn my beat-up old metal garage into a tool shed/workshop.  No heat, just good lighting and some colorful carpeting.  Then I grabbed some paint in my favorite outdoor color - teal - and it turned out to be surprisingly…not-ugly.   

7. Better-looking concrete.  Renee tells me that concrete has "come a long way from the poured driveway. If you’ve got old concrete outside, it can be dressed up with paint or stain."  And can I add that if you’ve got old concrete outside it probably looks horrible and DO check into having it resurfaced somehow, unless you’re getting rid of it altogether. 

I have only a vague notion of how this can be done, so I asked for more details and got them.  A very thin coat of a decorative, fine concrete can applied over the existing surface. These "overlays" come in various colors, and the texture is achieved during application. E.g., a broom can be used to achieve a non-slip finish, and trowels can create swirls and arcs.  And concrete dyes can be used for all sorts of cool effects.

I asked about cost and learned that overlay kits are available from companies like Decorative Concrete Kits for $300.00 for 400 square feet.  A concrete contractor would charge $2 to 7 per square foot, plus the cost of the concrete (which is cheap).  Asked about a faux marble look, Renee says it’s done with the same stamped concrete method that’s also used to mimic fractured slate, aged stone, limestone, effects that are achieved at an "affordable cost."

Renee, one more question.  Are there any affordable make-overs available for cinder block walls?  Something that would disguise their essential (and ugly) blockiness?

Photo credits:  Waterfall by LandPlan Landscaping.  Gazebo via Flickr.   Deck by BBC Construction.  Stone path via Flickr.  Retaining wall by  Antigua Landscapes.  Shed via Flickr. 

Though my deep lot is awfully narrow it still takes two shots with my Canon PowerShot to capture the whole thing, left to right.  So when professional garden photographer Rob Cardillo was visiting last week to shoot my garden I pumped him for information about cheap wide angle cameras and - because he’s one of the world’s nicest, most generous people - he offered his camera for me to grab a few quickies, which he promised to send to me.  Done! 

So what you see is my back garden at its most colorful, and also the progress being made by various groundcovers in replacing the former lawn.  It’s mostly a creeping sedum that pops up in this neighborhood as a weed and spreads like crazy.  Those full, billowy areas look maaavalous in the detail below, doncha think? Planted just last fall, that area filled in SO fast, I’m psyched that the bare soil around the more recent plantings will be gone soon.  Better be.

The sedums are accompanied by some mazus and an assortment of thymes, which I’m trying out on this mostly sunny hillside.  The mission of any plant on this site is to prevent erosion and eventually get thick enough to prevent weeds.  More will be revealed later this season.

I’ve confessed to having second thoughts about the whole lawn removal project, but maybe it’s just
impatience with the work in progress, construction site look of the garden at the moment.  Compared with my neighbors’ lovely green lawn, ya know.  But I’m over it (for now) and moving on.

When I last reported on this project I’d removed only the lower half of the lawn, which I was replacing with a variety of groundcovers, complaining all the while about it not looking good.  Well, I decided I wasn’t ever going to like it because it  looked exactly like half a lawn had been removed; the design just didn’t make sense.  So out came the rest of the lawn and the next step was to complete the fieldstone path across the whole space.  That meant a trip to the stoneyard.

Now here’s my beef about stoneyards: They’re NO PLACE for homeowners.  Even if you’re not run down by a frontloader, it’s really hard to find just a few of something, like the 13 fieldstones I needed.  The good ones are bundled up in pallet sizes and for small orders ya have to comb through what they call the "Loose Wall".  And some guy was already there doing the same thing, hunting for the largest and flattest from what would more appropriately be called the "Wall of Slim Pickings".  So rather than duke it out with him, I went in the office and asked if a new pallet could be opened up for us and it worked!  So I found 13 (barely) large enough fieldstones and completed the path.  And gardeners, you all agree that paths are fabulous, right?  Even when they’re much narrower than the two-person width that we’re always being told is the absolute minimum.

SLOW GARDENING
And this is a good opportunity to expound (again) on the topic of slowing down and getting it right, one of the advantages of DIY garden design.  Whether I’m creating a new border line or a path like this one, I always do it slowly and gradually, tweaking as I go, stepping back again and again to see if I like the look.  So what you see here is just one tweaking, with more adjustments to follow before they’re dug into place.

I sure do appreciate these late-bloomers.  The deep purple of New England aster.  The cheery whiteness of Japanese anemone.  The dainty blossoms and cool foliage of hardy begonia, even the nothing-fancy look of common garden phlox.  And there’s sedum ‘Autumn Joy’, at least the ones the deer didn’t get.

In the shrub department, the Tardiva blooms are still out and naturally, the Knockout roses are going strong like EverReady bunnies. 

So once again, Garden Blogger Bloom Day  illustrates what common, common taste I have in plants.  Guilty as charged.  But when coachees come here for plant ideas, they go off to the nurseries and you know what happens?  They find what they’re looking for, they don’t have to pay a lot, and the plants do what they’re supposed to do - survive.

Welcome to my mid-summer front entry garden. Just tuck under the English ivy-covered archway and head toward those Otto Luyken laurels (ubiquitous, I know - because they’re do-ers) and take a left to reach the front porch.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES AT PLAY
Think this is going to get esoteric?  You know, form, repetition, blah-blah-blah?  Well, no; my plant choices were a lot more plebian - and practical:

• Do I love the ivy?  Hell, no.  Sick of it.  Sick of explaining to people that no, it’s not harming anything where it’s growing.  But it was there when I bought the house and was the easiest and cheapest way to hide the chain-link fence.  Twenty-two years later I just want to get rid of it and replace the fence, but paying for electric service and health insurance has to come first.
• I did splurge once here and I’m glad I did because the walkway  used to be concrete and it went right up to the foundation of the house, covering the area under the window where the laurels are now.  Ew! The teak archway wasn’t cheap, either, but I love how in passing under it you know you’re entering a garden.
• The ‘Gold Coast’ Juniper on the left of the walkway serves the special purpose of holding up to  the daily pounding that spot receives from the Washington Post deliveryman.(Someone once helpfully suggested I try something lighter - like USA Today.) Numerous perennials had failed in that vulnerable spot.
• About those Otto Luykens and their ubiquity. I don’t care.  They look good every single day and when they’re blooming people actually notice them.  No fussing required, just 5 minutes of pruning every year or so.  Not every plant can be a star, you know; something’s gotta hide the damn foundation.
• To the right of the walkway is a modest little shade garden with absolutely nothing blooming and I love it anyway.  It holds pulmonaria, hostas, bishop’s weed, heucheras, astilbes, bleeding hearts, hellebores, and some not-terrible-looking rhodos.  See what I mean?

Now that I GET what the GardenBlogger Bloom Day is all about (finally), I’m enjoying photographing my garden monthly, and showing it off a bit.  But because I love seeing plants in their setting, I’ve taken mostly group shots and longer views.

The front garden has lots of color - purple coneflowers, Russian sage, and blue echinops, in addition to the hot-hot annuals in the pots (Wave petunias and sweet potato vine).

The curbside garden (called the "hell strip" by some) is looking happy with the commonest perennial there is, the generic garden phlox.  The sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ here is enjoying the one spot in the garden not reachable by deer (oh yeah, we have them this year).

And here’s my sunniest border in the backyard, again with lots of purple coneflower in bloom. On the left is the fabulous spirea ‘Ogon,’ with chartreuse willow-like foliage. Several large hydrangeas still look good a full month after flowering.  In fact, they look good til the dead of winter, bless their hearts.

Meet Nina’s front garden.  Previous owners tried to grow grass here but between the northern exposure and the huge oak in the middle, their attempts were doomed.  Nina knew better and created instead this charming woodland retreat.  (Fitting, since it’s located on Woodland Avenue, just a few houses down the street from me.)  She filled it with understory trees, like dogwords and serviceberries, that are just now coming into bloom, plus spring bulbs, pathways and some brand-new perennials.  So like any real garden, it keeps getting better. It just needs a load of leafmold mulch every spring.

The photo on the left was taken from the sidewalk and the one on the right from her house facing the street.

Now  since I’ve already dragged you down the street to see new Nina’s garden, how about a quick look at her green roof?  It’s actually one you may have even seen before, since pictures of it are all over the web.  This shot I found on the site of a local nonprofit.  Her green roof plant supplier, Ed Snodgrass, also uses this gorgeous example in his promotional materials.

Meet Dan.  He’s a tireless activist in the town of Takoma, most recently for sustainable city management. Yes, a liberal do-gooder and I say thank god someone will sit through all those meetings so the rest of us don’t have to.  Seriously.

But to get right to my point, Dan’s recently done some hands-on redevelopment in the rundown part of town by having built a most excellent commercial building - Voila the building.

Readers, here’s your job if you choose to accept it:  Pick some plants that would go with these colors.  Beyond your basic green, what?  I’m thinking conifers and ornamental grasses but what about something flowering?  These look like Western colors to me and I’m a true-blue easterner.  I’ve thought of exactly one so far - sedum ‘Autumn Joy’  - which I think would look good and be easy.  But what about the easy-care shrub roses I was thinking about for Dan, or the equally easy spireas?  I’m stuck.

(God, you should see the "dirt" that our chosen plants would be subjected to.  It’s typical construction site clay&rubble and they usually just leave it there, with sod on top, but not this time. I suggested 6 inches of real topsoil - what do you think?)

The site consists of three smallish areas (sorry - I’ll try to get some dimensions), all of which get afternoon sun, or will for the first 10 years or so until the new street trees he’ll be planting really produce some shade.  So yes it’ll be a slowly evolving garden, like all real ones.  The colors were chosen by local colorist Zoe Kyriacos, who’s enlivening our little town one building at a time.  Here’s a shot of Zoe and me on site.

And why are we helping Dan?  Well, you’re helping him because he’s such a good guy and you’re all nice people.  Me, I’m helping Dan because he and I have a barter thing going and he’s a computer expert.  YES!  Oh, and that part about him being a good guy. 

Just back from Richmond, VA, where I saw the GardenFest of Lights at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden.

The last time I visited the Ginter I complained about the full sun ruining most of my photos.  This time everything was perfect - warm enough to handle a camera easily, and a sunset to die for.  (More to come.)

Hard-core gardening readers here at Takoma Gardener may want to click over to GardenRant for the plan, some photos and all the dirty details.

Photo taken from my front porch.