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| Cylamen coum |
So far I've only shared pieces of my yard, specific areas that I've been working on. Rather than doing a year end recap (a bit late at this point!), I thought we could go on a walk through of my whole yard, look at what's in progress and what needs work next. Of course winter isn't the best time to see a northwest garden, but I think it's a useful time to get out and look at the shapes. But remember that almost the entire yard was weedy grass not too long ago!
Starting in the front yard, my
winter garden, a small area of lawn, and the
rose garden are on the north side of the driveway. I'm adding a few plants to the winter garden but mainly need to make sure the wisteria doesn't come back to life.
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| Winter garden from the street |
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| Winter garden, looking west |
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| Front lawn |
The
rose garden needs pruning soon and I'll likely move a few perennials around, but no major plans for this year.
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| Looking north |
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| Northwest corner |
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| Looking east |
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| Looking east, retaining wall on the right |
Down the north fence is a retaining wall bed that I haven't put much work into recently because the railroad ties need to come out. I'd like to just take them out and restore the slope, there's not much point in having a flat bed here because it's too shady to grow vegetables. Some of the shade comes from a row of lilacs next to the deck, which will be lovely later in the spring.
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| Looking south across the retaining wall bed |
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| Retaining wall bed, looking southwest, lilacs on the left |
A small retaining wall will be needed closer to the fence, don't want the neighbor's house to slide into our yard. Below that is the
north shade border, where I'm now practicing patience waiting for everything to grow in. I'd like to find an easy way to make the chain link fence look nice, I'm still thinking about that, but no other plans here.
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| Retaining wall bed and top of north shade border, looking northeast |
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| Looking east |
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| View west, back up the slope |
Across the patio and continuing down the north side, we reach the other railroad retaining wall and rotting steps, which all need to be replaced. The main concrete retaining wall is doing most of the work, the railroad ties just add a couple feet elevation, probably to try to level out the grassy area above - although it's still steep. The plan is to replace the railroad ties with rock, set into the slope so I can plant around them and take out more of the lawn area too.
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| South across the patio |
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| Straight down the slope, east, from the patio |
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| South across the sloped lawn, retaining wall on the left |
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| Rotting steps |
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| Concrete retaining wall, looking south |
On the north side of the concrete retaining wall is a big old asian pear, and then two dwarf apple trees. There is a flat lawn area below the retaining wall and then another slope. Across the top of that slope are two grapes and three hardy kiwi, with a row of raspberries and four blueberries down the slope. I pruned the raspberries and blueberries already in January, grapes and apples are next.
We replaced the
grape and kiwi trellises last year. I'm looking at what can be planted under the grapes, since I don't want to let that go back to weeds, but may just add more wood chip mulch for this year.
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| Looking east down the slope from the steps |
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| Apple trees and grapes, looking southeast |
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| South across the slope, grapes on the right |
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| Southwest up the sunny hillside, blueberries in front, raspberries between the metal posts |
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| South across the meadow |
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| View from the very bottom, looking west back up the slope |
This post has gotten a bit long, so we'll continue next time with a walk up the south side of the yard, and perhaps a map!
