Building a woodland garden

The picture above gives away the fact that I've been slow to post updates, but I'm already hard at work on the first major project for this year.

This has been a sunny garden area next to the south side of the house. It's outside the kitchen window, which sounds convenient, but it can't be accessed without going downstairs. I've been using it as a vegetable garden, with flowers encroaching in recent years, but the soil is full of clay, it's soggy far into the spring and hard as a brick in the summer. Our yard is full of sunny areas, and really what I want is more shade. A tree here will provide shade to the kitchen in the heat of the summer and a nice cooler area just off of the back "deck" (large concrete slab area). Plus, more privacy from the neighbors on this side.

Starting point

There are railroad ties under those bricks too

The start of the plan was to remove the railroad ties, fill in the slope to its more natural shape, and plant a shade tree. Our yard has three separate retaining walls built with railroad ties that are now rotting. This is the smallest and the only one that we'll be able to tackle on our own. And.... this part is close to done!

We pulled out the railroad ties, which was actually not as hard as I expected except for a couple that were really buried. Still have to get someone to come haul them away, but they are out and without serious injury to the laborers. My husband had some scraped fingers and my back didn't feel so good after the last two!

I've been hauling organic matter from around the yard to fill in the slope: a couple of miscellaneous weed piles, rotting wood, grass that was dug up in the process of unburying railroad ties, and wood chip mulch. It'll be settling for a long time, but I don't need to plant anything right on the edge.

First day progress

Railroad ties around the edge are out

Then, planted a maple tree. This is an acer rubrum 'Franksred', which should have lovely fall color and grow fairly quickly to 30-40 feet. It's not really visible in photos, but it's planted raised up about 6 inches, the whole area will be heavily mulched to try to help with the clay.

I got it from a big block hardware store and ended up having to do surgery to clean up circling roots, but I think it will be ok. I took a chance when I saw it because it's exactly the tree I wanted and a large size. Well actually I thought about it for two weeks, because I rarely do anything hastily, and but then went ahead and took a chance!

Status today

I had to move my strawberries to pots to get them out of the way, which was a good opportunity to divide them. If anyone local wants strawberry plants, we have plenty! I still need to figure out where to plant a few vegetables, that'll probably be a raised bed, which will solve the clay soil issue. The flowers will need to move too, a few will be going nearby just outside of the old retaining wall boundary, but most don't need to be moved yet.

Next, I need to haul more material to fill in the slope and then look at what else to plant. There is room for one or maybe two rhododendrons further up the slope, and salal and sword ferns near the maple - just to start with. The area under the kitchen deck, visible in the top right of the photo above, will be planted similarly for a nice partly native woodland theme.