Category Archives: garden

Instant deck.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on April 26, 2009 – 9:18 am
Filed under garden

Well, almost instant. It took Evan and I about 8 hours to build the flat deck in my garden plan yesterday. Neither one of us have ever done this kind of thing before, so we’re feeling pretty pleased with ourselves right now!

We have îpe tastes but a tiny budget, so we had to go with standard PT lumber (sorry, planet). Next weekend I’ll stain it charcoal and it will look great.

We used the Dek-Block pier system, and it was really simple. The site lets you enter the size of your deck, and spits out a supply list and instruction sheets. Pretty amazing. The hardest part was getting everything level since our garden slopes from side to side, but even that wasn’t so bad once we had a system going. The total cost was just around $300 for an 8×8 deck, including the screws and the stain.

Actually, now that I think about it, the hardest part is TODAY—my arms feel like they’re going to detach themselves from my body. I had a difficult time getting out of bed this morning. Strong and in shape I am decidedly NOT.

Today I’m going to be planting a bunch of Pachysandra graciously donated by a friend working on her own garden makeover. Next week, we’re hoping to start setting up the dog run!

Garden plan!

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Posted by Anna at D16 on April 22, 2009 – 11:15 pm
Filed under garden


(click to see the garden in context)

You guys are great! All of the comments on yesterday’s post gave me the confidence to pull together a new plan for the garden—something that will cost very little and, I think, make our garden very usable very soon. I’m patient when it comes to plants, but I’m not patient when it comes to wasted space!

I’m excited about the grassy area for the dogs. Fritz and Bruno had a playdate with their new friends Maggie and Ada last weekend, and they were very impressed with their fenced-in grass run. Fritz is one of those dogs that tries to eat everything (*cough*sofa*cough*), and I get nervous about him having free run of the garden and all of the gravel, bark chips, and plants in it. A contained area will give our guys freedom to play without us having to hover over them every second.

I’ll try to take some up-to-date photos of our front garden tomorrow morning, too. The Purpleleaf Sand-Cherry is in full bloom right now, and it’s pretty fabulous!

Garden time: Let’s get serious!

62
Posted by Anna at D16 on April 21, 2009 – 2:39 pm
Filed under garden, inspiration

Okay, so it’s been quite some time since I mentioned the garden, I know. Winter was a good excuse for a few months, but now that it’s warming up (let’s pretend yesterday never happened—it’s spring for real now, right? It’s going to be in the 80s this weekend, after all) I really have to get out there and get things moving again.

So this is where we were last June. Since then, two of the rhododendrons have died (the third is doing just fine, go figure), both azaleas bit the dust, and the elderberries teetered on the verge of death under the blistering August sun (they seem to be coming back, though). The fireglow Japanese maple has a fresh set of leaves coming in, the ivy is starting to perk up a bit, and the pachysandra is spindly but alive. The hostas are currently MIA (do they disappear in winter?).

The rest of the garden is basically a giant pile of dirt. I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS. Last weekend we spent a few hours raking up leaves, getting the dead plants out of the ground, and moving some dirt around. We basically have no budget (meaning “no money”, not “I don’t need to make a budget because money is no object”) for the garden, and I just don’t know what to do. Hauling tiny (but heavy) bags of crushed stone and sand through the house became very tedious very quickly, but we’re still nowhere close to having the amount we’d need to provide proper the underlayment for a stone patio.

My head hurts. I just want some amazing landscaper to come and do this for me. (For free.)

In lieu of doing actual work on the garden, I’m just going to post a bunch of inspiration photos.


(LivingEtc)


(Domino)

Yes, this again! And still my favorite.


(I can’t remember where this comes from. If you know, please tell me!)


(these five from Modular Garden)


(heavypetal; check out the full set)


(Walter Gropius house, from catfunt)

Garden progress.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on June 2, 2008 – 2:11 pm
Filed under garden, house

Evan and I spent three solid days (minus some well-timed thunderstorm downtime) working in the garden, and the results are really satisfying. It’s actually starting to look like something out there! Considering the garden looked like this (remember that dog pen, Adam?!) when we bought the house and like this just a couple of months ago, I’d say this is quite an improvement.

We made a gravel path!

First we painted some pressure-treated wood with special outdoor stain, then we made a rectangular frame with stakes on the bottom.

Then we dug and dug and dug for a really long time, and smacked the dirt down flat with my new favorite tool, a hand tamper. We took turns. Evan’s turns were longer than mine. I’m not very strong!

Landscape cloth went on top of the dirt, and then we poured in 5 of the 6 bags of gravel we dragged into the garden through our basement.

SO EXCITING! A path! Which goes nowhere! (Eventually we’ll put something at the end.)

We also planted lots of stuff, so the Japanese Maple isn’t lonely out there anymore. On the left (shady) side, there are three Rhododendrons, an Azalea, Baltic Ivy (which will eventually climb up and cover a good portion if the fence), and a bunch of Pachysandra that I’m hoping fills in nicely and gives up some good ground covering. On the right (sunny) side, there are two Black Lace Elderberries and three Big Daddy Hostas. Everything is still pretty small, but I’m sure a year from now it’ll be looking lush and full.

The next steps are the stone patio and the vegetable garden!

Plants on the front porch.

9
Posted by Anna at D16 on May 28, 2008 – 8:39 am
Filed under garden, house

Black false shamrock (black velvet clover) in pots close to the house, away from the blazing sun. I love these. I’m going to plant more of them in the window boxes at the back of the house, since they do well in the shade.

The weather is amazing right now, perfect for being outside and planting things! This is the time of the year when I get impatient and want to plant MORE MORE MORE instead of waiting for things to grow and fill in. I have to restrain myself, though, because otherwise by the time July rolls around, the garden will be overrun and crazy and I’ll be wishing I hadn’t planted things quite so closely together.

I’ve limited the pots on the porch to ONE white geranium each, plus some dragon’s blood sedum (which should trail over the side eventually), and two of something which might be black elephant ear. GROW! NOW! (It’s been three days. I should probably relax a little.)

Japanese maple in the garden.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on May 27, 2008 – 1:15 pm
Filed under garden

Yay! Something is now intentionally growing in the back garden!

My mother and I planted this Fireglow Japanese Maple in the garden yesterday. It’s beautiful! I love Japanese Maples. We bought the biggest one we could fit in the car. I’m crossing my fingers really tightly that it doesn’t die, because, well… it wasn’t cheap. I’m always shocked by how much plants cost (especially the bigger, more established ones), even though I know what to expect. It just seems like plants should be free.

Evan and I also panted three Rhododendron bushes, but I was too exhausted to lift a camera to document them when we were done! If they haven’t died by tonight, I’ll take a picture.

Pictures of the front garden (now in its third year and coming along quite nicely) coming soon…

Clean slate (dirt, plywood).

20
Posted by Anna at D16 on May 7, 2008 – 3:16 pm
Filed under garden, house

My mother and I spent a couple of hours clearing out all of the remaining weeds and grass in the garden. I feel so inspired! She also helped me to come up with a pretty great new design for the landscaping, and I’m going to try to break it down into stages so we can move forward with the whole thing at a manageable pace.

Oh! And I think we have a new tile guy, which is very exiting. Evan and B spent the weekend rebuilding the subfloor (and the sub-subfloor) in the bathroom, so things are moving right along…

Flowerpots by Maija Louekari.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on April 29, 2008 – 8:55 am
Filed under art & design, garden, inspiration

The pots are saying: “Hey ya!” Make your neighbourhood more alive

I love this idea! These flowerpots are by Maija Louekari (I’ve mentioned her before). So fun!

What would you make pots on your windowsill spell? I’m thinking “Go away!”, personally, but that’s not very nice of me. Maybe this is an idea better reserved for the back garden for those of us who are less…gregarious.

New fence & new/old chairs.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on April 28, 2008 – 11:05 am
Filed under garden, scavenged

Look! It’s a fence! We knew we couldn’t do it ourselves, so we broke down and paid someone to come and install a fence for us. It makes a massive difference, despite the rest of the garden still being no more than a few clumps of grass on a plot of dirt. I can’t even describe how wonderful it is to go back there and not have to look at anyone else’s plots of dirt and patches of grass, and to just be limited to our own.

I know it’s not some incredible modernist construction, but it’s a little bit of privacy and containment. Fences are expensive to have installed (much more so than you’d think), so there was no way we could do a great horizontal cedar one or anything like that. This one will go gray eventually, since we’re not going to treat it with any preservatives. I’ll like it more when it’s gray.

This is the other side of the yard, warts and all. The cement that I want to cover with pea gravel, the too-small (yet also too large) fake-old porch, the awful white door with the fake muntins (oh, how I loathe fake muntins!), etc. Gross. This needs a lot of work, I know. It’ll get there.

We also drove out to Westchester to pick up a couple of original Knoll Hardoy/BFK butterfly chairs that I found on Craigslist. They have new covers made out of Mechoshade that’s safe to keep outside. The cloth has a really nice weave that reads as a light gray from a distance. I love these chairs! They’re going to look great with our new table.

A little at a time…

Edible Estates/Animal Estates.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on April 24, 2008 – 10:16 am
Filed under art & design, four legs, garden, inspiration, new york city

Los Angeles architect Fritz Haeg narrows the divide between residents and their communities with projects like Edible Estates, an international effort to convert front lawns into working food gardens.

Watch it all the way through. It’ll make you feel great, I promise. (From Dwell.)

Read More »

Garden frustration.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on April 17, 2008 – 10:26 pm
Filed under garden

Following the wake-up call that was the landscaper’s quote on our original garden plan, I feel like I’ve hit a wall in terms of planning our outdoor space. Landscaping is expensive, hard work. Work that we don’t have the time, expertise, or energy for. Also, because we live in a row house with limited access to the garden beyond walking through the house or basement, it’s very difficult to see how exactly we would be able to get, say, 2.5 tons of pea gravel back there.

It’s a 35′x20′ lot, and I have no idea what to do with it. Somehow, I thought that having the mulberry tree removed would get things in motion. It’s gone (and I’m glad—the thing was a berry-dropping, sunlight-killing, ant-attracting beast) but I’m still at a loss. All I know is that I don’t want grass, it has to be dog-friendly, I want to grow some vegetables, and it can’t cost a fortune.

All puppies, all the time.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on April 16, 2008 – 10:19 am
Filed under four legs, garden, house

I know, all I have to talk about right now is FRITZ, FRITZ, FRITZ. It’s all-consuming! Things are going well. Bruno has left the “if I ignore him, maybe he’ll just disappear” stage, and has entered the “I’ll play with him, but he can’t sleep next to me” stage. It’s so fun to watch them play! Bruno chases Fritz, Fritz zooms around the house like a maniac, Fritz does a war dance in front of Bruno, Bruno chases Fritz, Fritz falls asleep, Bruno falls asleep (in a separate bed, of course), etc. It’s great. Fritz is also starting to get the hang of the whole housebreaking thing, so it’s possible our living room rug could make a reappearance as early as next week.

Fritz looooooves to chew! He’s also a fan of his new bed from Otis and Claude (seen here with a LUDDE sheepskin wrapped around the cushion). I dream of the day when he and Bruno are curled up in it together!

Meanwhile…
→ the plumbers are on their fourth day of work (!), and the roughing-in still isn’t done
→ the quote came in on our garden plan from the landscaper, and it is INSANE
→ a tree guy is coming to remove the offending mulberry tree today (for a very reasonable price)
→ maybe we can build a fence ourselves after all…

Scavenged (sort of): new chairs for the garden.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on March 23, 2008 – 4:22 pm
Filed under garden, house, scavenged

Yesterday we brought home a pair of Bertoia side chairs to use in the back garden. They weren’t a true scavenged find as they are new, but I’m counting them as such since they were reduced in price by more than 75%. Yes!! They both have a wee bit of rust staining around some of the welds—barely noticeable, really—but since we’ll be using them outside anyway, it doesn’t matter.

Honestly, when a single wire chair retails for $421, the only way it’s coming home with me is if it’s DRASTICALLY discounted or if I find it in the garbage. I am forever grateful for the existence of the DWR Annex!

You wouldn’t know it from reading my posts, but there’s 500 SF garden at the back of this house. Sadly, we haven’t done anything with it other than clean up the trash, remove a chain link dog pen (thanks, Adam!), and level the ground a bit. Before anything is planted, it desperately needs a tall fence to hide the neighbors’ yards. There’s also a rather annoying mulberry tree that we want to have removed, as the copious amounts of squishy berries it drops all over the place during summer render the yard virtually unusable.

It’s an ugly little patch of land right now, but you’ll see—these chairs are just the beginning! It’ll be looking like Carin Goldberg’s garden in no time.

I need more plant life!

5
Posted by Anna at D16 on February 3, 2008 – 6:01 pm
Filed under garden, house

Hot pink tulips in the office, and white mums ready to be potted for the dressing room.

It’s muddy and gross outside, the groundhog says it’s going to be six more weeks until winter ends, and we don’t even have any snow to speak of. What’s the point of winter if there’s no snow?

I am ready to start gardening outside again!

Regrouping.

4
Posted by Anna at D16 on October 30, 2007 – 5:40 pm
Filed under garden, house

I’m off work until the end of the week, and I used my first day of vacation to clean, organize, and listen to T.Rex and Joe Jackson, mostly. Tonight I’ll cook two big pots of soup to put in the freezer. This is the window next to my kitchen sink. The sash needs to be repaired and painted, the radiator needs painting, and the plants really should have been properly potted by now…but it’s lovely anyway. I can’t believe the impatiens in the windowbox are still alive in this freezing weather!

Blooming.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on September 18, 2007 – 9:15 am
Filed under garden, house

All at once, the purple aster in the front garden is in bloom! Fall is definitely coming. The days are already getting shorter, and I need a coat when I leave the house in the morning.

purple aster

Front garden.

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Posted by Anna at D16 on July 3, 2007 – 7:24 am
Filed under garden, house

When we bought our house in March 2006, the front garden was a tiny patch of dying grass, dirt, and rocks. Now we have a mass of carpet roses, lavender, dusty miller, creeping thyme, creeping jenny, phlox, purple-leaf sand cherry, boxwood, petunias, sweet potato vines, vinca, lady’s mantle, and, and, and…!

I never knew just how much I love being outside. My past experimentations with plants have been less than fruitful, so it’s quite gratifying to see that even the blackest of thumbs can learn a thing or two. There are still some patches I need to fill in (it’s tricky to find plants that can survive full sun all day long), but it’s definitely getting there. I can’t wait to see how it will look in a few years when the boxwood has grown and spread!

Lots of pictures! Read More »