Happy accidents when you don't know what you're doing

Lately I've been appreciating a bit of seredipity in the entrance to the backyard. Back in 2011 I posted about how I wanted the entrance to the back garden to envelop you, so you'd get a slow reveal to the rest of the yard. 

After a couple of unsuccessful plantings (mock orange, flowering currant, some other stuff) I planted a Ceanothus thyrsiflorus in 2012 and it grew quickly.

My neighbors had a gorgeous ceanothus that spilled into our side yard and it had been trained as a tree:

When the next door house was flipped and sold they removed this ceanothus and I lost all the shade in my side yard.

I'd never really seen another Ceanothus because I was new to gardening so I didn't realize most people let them grow as shrubs. I limbed up mine too and now it provides a nice canopy along the pathway. Most visitors don't recognize what it is because, you know, it should be a shrub. Or maybe the straight species is always a tree but everyone grows more exciting cultivars like 'Dark Star'.

Tree sized in six years!

I don't always love this ceanothus because its bloom time is short and the flowers aren't as intensely colored as some of the named cultivars. It's also messy once the blooms die. The good news is they don't live very long so I'll probably be shopping for a new tree/shrub in the next ten years.

Please also admire the color echo between the hosta and the hose junking up the photo. Based on every photo I have ever taken it looks like I live in a hose-testing facility.

And since we're looking at that old post, let's do a before and after!

Before

After

Looking back at the entrance, you can see that my wine barrel has since been planted with bamboo, the rain garden was installed, and everything grew like crazy. That old bit of fence on the left was removed as well.

Before

After

Standing in the middle of the yard and looking at the back of the house you can see that we were, in 2011, considering building a huge deck off the back of the house. It's not all happy accidents when you don't know what you're doing! What the fuck were we thinking?

Before

After

Another gigantic whatthefuck was forming here with that goofy shaped bed (hinted at here with stones on the lawn). Circles and squares, damn it! None of this freestyle nonsense!

Before

After

So the moral of the story is that you can limb up your ceanothus but you shouldn't hire Greg or I to design decks or raised beds for you. We suck at it.

Aloha, comrades

Welp, big projects have been afoot at Casa de Hammer. But it turns out that having a sibling die and then going through one of the most stressful election cycles only to be dropped into an Orwellian hellscape leaves you uninterested in blogging. For me, it left me uninterested in anything but lying on the couch and wondering what the fuck was going on. I opened my garden in June and then declined to touch it again for the rest of the year. I just couldn't summon the energy.

Greg and I were still trying to figure out what we wanted to do about some sort of hard surface and some sort of shade structure in the backyard when I showed him a picture of Lance's shade structure.

Image source: Lance at Garden Riots

It was built by Bamboo Craftsman and we both really loved it. We wondered what if we just hired them to build us something instead of endlessly wondering what to build and then ultimately fucking it up ourselves? Also, I was stuck on the couch and I am the labor powerhouse in this house, so this was the only way it was going to get done. Whoever said "more money, more problems" was a goddamn liar because being able to hire projects out is fucking GREAT.

The scale model

Troy, owner of Bamboo Craftsman and the designer of our pavilion

As a bonus, I got to dig up all the plants I had just planted after having the cedar removed.

It turns out that doing it yourself is rewarding and thrifty but hiring people who know what they're doing is even better.

A trench was dug for electricity

We told Troy that we wanted something that felt more like old Hawaii and less like a tiki bar. I also wanted a swing so I could have somewhere to sit and enjoy the view of the garden that I might enjoy tending again someday. He dubbed our project the Island Pavilion but we've been jokingly calling it the fallout shelter because I'm terrified of our current geopolitical situation and I really want to build an underground fallout shelter beneath it.

Fun fact! I didn't know how to spell "pavilion" correctly before this project.

All of the materials, aside from the bolts and brackets, were salvage. We're gonna be so smug at dinner parties!

I know what you're thinking. God, you paid someone to build you a beautiful structure and this is the best photography you can muster? I don't know if you've heard, but Portland has been under a foot of snow and I haven't left the house in weeks. Also, I bought a pressure cooker so I'm focusing all of my energy on making different kinds of broth. Believe it or not, this is progress from 2016. I'm still sitting on the couch and wondering what the fuck is going on but now I have broth! That guy at New Seasons told me broth is "life giving." Hippies are weird.

I don't deserve this beautiful thing.

Better pictures soon.

What about that tree?

Back in April I wrote that we were going to remove the cedar tree from our backyard. A huge thank you to everyone who gave me input on removing the pieris (it's gone!), as well as suggestions for new plants in this area.

Before: boxwood on the right, Pieris on the left

The tree came down super fast by a company I can't recommend, so I won't mention who they are. The owner hires day laborers, pays them terribly, and they trampled my plants.

Please enjoy this video of the top-most part of the tree being removed. I shot it while lying on the floor of our office. I had no idea how tree removal would work without a crane, so this was fascinating and nerve-wracking to watch.

The company did a piss poor job of grinding out the stump (I should've used Chip Away like I have in the past), so we couldn't sink the new fence post halfway between the existing posts, like we wanted. Eventually everything will grow in and we shouldn't notice how stupid this fence looks.

After we rebuilt the fence (the extra-tall post is so we can string lights from it), I had to rake up years and years of cedar detritus and all the shavings from the stump grinding. The area was a MESS.

Then I got to cram way too many plants in!

This is the least exciting photo ever, I know. It's pretty unexciting in real life, too. The structure will eventually come from shrubs that are too small to see, so everything is filled in with a mix of grasses and annuals. If this turns into anything visually pleasing by the end of the summer, I will be surprised.

In the meantime, I don't miss the cedar at all. I'm so excited about the new trees and shrubs I have planted. Our next step is to talk to a professional about building a shade structure of some sort and figuring out whether we're going to build a platform deck. We have been absolutely paralyzed by indecision, so it's time to talk to someone with experience. Then we can get down to the sweet business of drinking gin and tonics and relaxing in the backyard.

Ha ha, just kidding. I'm going to stuff more plants into this area. I'll probably take them from the area on the left, where I crammed too many plants last summer. I can't help myself.

A clean slate

Big plans are afoot here. After dealing with a poorly sited Western red cedar for seven years, I've decided to have it removed.

While I was completing all the measurements required by the city, I discovered that the root flare is 30 inches from my neighbor's foundation (and getting closer every year). 

It also ate his hose bib. I feel bad now for not removing it earlier. It has created fencing challenges and I couldn't be happier to see it go. With the tree gone we can safely build our platform deck as far over as we want without worrying about doing root damage.

While I'm at it, I'm going to tear out the boxwood located in the corner of the yard. I never removed it before because I figured nothing else would be able to get up to size with competition from a mature tree.

And while I'm dismantling the fence and digging up all of the plants in this area, I'm considering removing the pieris too. I'm conflicted about this one, because it's evergreen and established and it requires no water BUT I just don't love it. And as long as I'm having someone grind out stumps, I might as well have them grind that one too. It also has a filbert tree sprouting right next to it that we can't seem to eradicate.

All of this means that I have a huge new area where I can plant the shrubs and trees I've always wanted to plant. On the short list for a replacement tree is Magnoila macrophylla var. Ashei. I love the huge leaves and I covet Clifford, Loree's Magnolia macrophylla. My tentative plan is something like this:

Click to embiggen

I came home from Xera with an olive tree (Olea europaea 'Frantoio') for the corner. Greg and Paul said it gets up to size quickly, requires little water, and has fantastic winter interest.

Photo source

I had been considering Arbutus unedo but Paul warned me that they are very messy. Also on the list currently:

• Leptospermum lanigerum (it was at Xera when I was buying the olive tree and the small leaves looked fantastic next to the olive)
• Ceanothus x 'Concha'
• Maybe another manzanita?

I have two existing Mahonia ('Underway' and 'Winter Sun') that will get moved a bit. I also have a golden ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius 'Nugget') that I'd like to keep in the area.

If you had a blank slate, what shrubs would you plant? Would you keep the pieris? I'm on a standard city lot, so my room for large shrubs is limited and I want to plant ones that I'll be completely in love with. Any opinions are welcome!

More gravel. More grasses. More sleeping.

I've been an insomniac my whole life. Last fall everything got way worse and I basically stopped sleeping. Things are a lot better now, thanks to a light box, melatonin, and what they refer to as "sleep hygiene." At night I cut out blue light which means for the last two hours of my day I live in a world without the internet or TV. I have to read books or work on projects that don't require the Internet. This means I mostly read books because every project leads back to the Internet.

I was reading Beth Chatto's Gravel Garden the other night and I wanted to look up some plants she described . . . but I couldn't. I just had to jot down a note to research it later. It's probably for the best, since I'd just end up on Plant Lust, then I'd fall down the rabbit hole of Google Images and various garden blogs. How did people garden before the Internet? And how much more productive could I be without an iPad?

In our own gravel garden things are chugging along. We've figured out where we want the deck and now we just have to figure out how to build it. The original plan was to wait on the deck until next summer but as I had rock being delivered, Greg said, "Maybe we should just do it this summer," hence my mad scrambling and panic a few weeks back. All of the sudden that vague rectangle on the paper plan needed to be finalized.

We've marked out the spot for the new deck with yellow spikes that I WILL trip over at some point. We're still deciding whether we want to build the deck before or after the wedding in June.

The parabola-shaped rock wall was changed to an even curve. Greg thinks this is a downgrade but my brain likes it better.

I need to retool some of the planting because I totally planted on a grid and I didn't overlap my plants enough, so I have big blobs of the same plants that don't meld nicely into the other blobs. Anyway.

What did I plant?

The centerpiece of this bed is Arctostaphylos 'St. Helena.' I went to Xera and pumped Paul and Greg for their opinions on the very best manzanitas. I originally wanted A. viscida 'Sweet Adinah' but they warned me that it's prone to randomly losing branches and it's incredibly picky about soil, location, and drainage. St. Helena has those big beautiful leaves and will handle being in a northern aspect (though it's still getting 6-8 hours of sun a day) better than others. I also like how blue the leaves are.

Arctostaphylos manzanita 'St. Helena'

I wanted this bed to be low water and I wanted a lot of grasses. We've got a whole bunch of Schizachyrium 'The Blues', Pennisetum spatheolatum, Anemanthele lessoniana, and Festuca roemeri.

Schizachyrium scoparium 'The Blues' in the garden of Greg Shepherd

Pennisetum spatheolatum send up hundreds of little exclamation points

Anemanthele lessoniana in my side yard

Festuca roemeri Photo source: The Evergreen State College

I have a bunch of Achnatherum calamagrostis on order, which will also get squeezed in here.

I also shoehorned in smaller shrubs like Baptisia 'Purple Smoke' and Hypericum 'Albury Purple.' I also rescued a crapload of Salvia 'May Night' from the front garden so something in this bed wouldn't be tiny. Can you tell I love purple?

I also bought one of those stupid Digiplexis annuals on a whim, which I now regret. I do not like that pink.

Baptisia 'Purple Smoke'

In other parts of the garden, I tore out the flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) that used to live in between the two clumps of bamboo. I hated the color of the blooms and it's a pretty boring shrub. I vacillated for years about ripping out this one. It's drought tolerant and low maintenance but it wasn't sparking joy, so out it went. I planted a new Ribes in the front garden and it blooms a nice hot pink that plays nicer with all of my orange flowers.

In its place I planted Tetrapanax papyifera 'Steroidal Giant' (which is hiding behind the clump of Acanthus spinosus), Miscanthus purpurescens, a cananna (Canna musafolia), and three Calamagrostis foliosa that I rescued from another part of the garden where they didn't get enough sun to color up like they should.

The back rain garden finally got edged too. It's always had a soil berm edging it, which just petered out into cedar chips.

We're not missing a stone, that's the overflow notch.

It looks pretty silly right now because I'm still futzing with the stone placement. Then all the cedar chips in the pathway will get scraped up and replaced with gravel. I still have so much work to do but I'm pleased with how everything is coming along.

We tested happy hour in the garden this weekend and it still worked! Whew.

Hardscaping is hard.

We haven't been very good lately at taking it easy on the weekends. Last weekend they were calling for rain but then on the Thursday before the forecast changed to sun and I was like, "I guess there's no reason not to tear out the lawn in the backyard."

This was back breaking and it sucked so hard that I'm glad we may never have to remove sod at this house again. This was before, with our weird boards showing where a low deck will go.

As before, we put our sod on craigslist and a bunch of weirdos showed up and took it home. Enjoy your crap lawn! You're insane. Also, my back hurts.Those rolls were HEAVY. But now I can say I've removed every inch of sod from this property.

Then Greg and I sat here in our mudpit and drank a gin and tonic and bemoaned that our work was just beginning.

And then we moved two yards of gravel to the backyard . . .

. . . so that this guy could deliver two tons of rock to me.

And then Sunday morning I started working on a rock wall.

And then I had a crisis of confidence and nearly broke down because I couldn't tell if it was ugly or not. It looked great on paper! I'm still unsure of how to size the deck appropriately. So I pulled out some boards from the garage so I could make a poorly rendered mockup in Photoshop of what the deck might look like. Picture a beautifully stained 4 inch platform deck. And all of the old Home Depot retaining wall stones are going.

I need to redo the right side of the rock wall and bring it out a bit; I don't like the angle of the curve the way it is right now. The fake deck is currently 10x14 feet. I've looked high and low for some sort of guide for deck sizes (how much room do people need around a dining table? more than three feet?) but every guide is for a mega-deck in a yard where people hate gardening. I vacillate between thinking it's way too big and fearing it will be too small. Our deck just needs to hold a table that sits four people and our cute little bamboo couch.

We have two stupid things and one serious thing dictating the size and location of the deck. The serious thing is the drip line of the cedar, which we need to dig outside of, so it can't shift left any more, unless we cantilever the deck over the footings. The two stupid things are what-ifs that we never do:

1. Really large dinner parties. Though we host barbecues, we've never had a large dinner party in the summer (I hate cooking when it's hot) and a long table could be moved to the open gravel area IF that ever happened. 
2. Movie viewings. We don't own a screen but we borrowed a friend's screen ONCE four years ago and hosted a movie night. Greg wants me to leave this wall clear so we can hang the screen we may never borrow again:

The view from the deck

I'm sort of inclined to move the rock wall out even further, movie screen be damned (the front plants will be short, anyway). My main goal with this project is to get as much planting space as humanly possible while getting a slightly raised area for wining and dining (that may get a pergola or cover at some point). 

I'm already happy because we won't have a dormant lawn, come July. It made the backyard look so desiccated and sad all summer. All of the new plantings for the rock wall area will be drought-tolerant because I hate watering.

If anyone has opinions or advice, I'm all ears. Bigger deck? Smaller? Cantilevered? Get rid of it all and put in sod? I just don't know anymore.