Here is the back before we dug the new foundation for the addition.


(yes, I know  this is about moving my roses, but you need to see how their placement came about and how I had to learn to put the pieces of the puzzle together... light, soil, area etc... so bear with me through this rather long tale...)

The addition has begun, the river rock bed has “Big O” under and slopes toward the back corner of the garden where a deep rock well was dug to keep any water run-off from draining into neighbouring gardens.



I think this river-rock bed is a clever and attractive way to hide a drainage pipe. I cannot take credit for it, but I love how it looks and how it serves a good purpose too.

The large stone at the end of the ‘bed’ is on top of a 4 foot deep hole filled with gravel and stone.  

One day, we will put a water feature of some sort here, so in order to do that, we needed to move that stone. Once the gardens are in, we will not want the digger crawling down through them to move it...imagine it smashing roses, and tomatoes and sweet little peas !  Ack !  So it has to be moved soon.  We’ll just have him move it to one side, plant something lovely down there, with a statue or other feature.  But that remains for another creative day.

This is the way the south-west corner looked before the work began in the  Spring.  The cedar hedge is ours with a very large  Black Walnut in the background - in the neighbour’s garden.  I have researched what will grow under it and the list is quite extensive but for my purposes, all I have to plant will be happy.

This is the same corner, during the rock placing act.  That big rock in the corner, actually came out of the hole from the foundation.  The top split off and so the boys thought it would be a great sitting rock - they dubbed it the ‘Love Rock’.

I plan to put Hydrangeas on either side with Astilbes in front of them.  I have 3 large “Endless Summer” that I fed Aluminum Sulphate to keep them blue; one called “Claudie”, one “Lace Cap” and a “Nikko Blue”.  

As for Astilbes?  I brought at least 20 in shades that vary from white to  mauve and pink. Some are a few years old and some, I started from bare roots this past Spring.  In fact, I bought them in May, got busy and forgot them until the end of June. They were pretty dried out, but I doused them with water and two days later plunked them into the soil.  Guess what? Of the 18 in the bag (a real deal)  15 survived.  Except for the 2 the bratty squirrel dug up.   Yuk.

But on to more about gardens.

Now back to the garden... the one in the back....


 Looking southeast, this is how it looked in the early Spring of that first year before any renovations to the house.

The digging began.  This mound of earth came from the dug
foundation at the back of the house to the right of this photo.

This is how it looked after the boys played with the rocks one day when I was away for a few hours.  This mid section will make a nice vegetable garden as it will be closest to the kitchen door and gets lots of sun.

The deck will be at the bottom right of this photo, just off the kitchen.  Some of these rocks came from the hole they dug for the foundation; some of them came from the digger-man’s quarry.  I will never forget the laughing and joking among the ‘boys‘  while playing with and moving the rocks, one by one.

They had way too much fun.




We bought blueberry bushes and two apple trees for the garden.  The apples are Honey Crisp (our favourite) and its pollinator, Royal Gala.  They would be planted at the end of the veggie bed ; one on either side of the ‘river bed’.

There is room in the small space above the Veggie bed for lilies - I think.  I wanted a hedge of roses, but it seems the snow will be plowed or pushed back off the drive onto this bed.  Will the roses survive? Years ago, a city nursery had its greenhouses on a busy street and a rose hedge  in front.  They took all the salt and winter debris with a toughness that defies logic.  So, maybe it might work for me.

I did  buy 4 small roses called “OSO easy” -Peachy Cream-- hardy to zone 3 - so maybe I shall give it a shot.  Poor things were on sale for $4 each, crying for me to take them home. Orphans, they were… the end of the season.

… now where should they go?

"Think Like a Plant" says Evelyn Wolf of "Garden Possibilities...  http://www.gardenpossibilities.com

I heard her say we should ‘think like a plant’. Hmmm.  What she meant, is that plant life is a circular cycle.  A plant has only two goals: the first is always- to produce seed - always.  The second is to survive.

 Mark Cullen says that when we see a large mass of pine cones on the top of a conifer, we need to think back to its life almost a year previous.  If there was  a drought, or some other crisis, the tree goes into survival mode… not survival of itself, necessarily, but of its offspring,  namely the seeds from those cones; and it goes into production mode so that if the tree does not survive, its seeds will.  That is very unselfish - don’t you think?

In the fall of the year, plants will have pulled all the nutrients they can from the air, water and soil and push them down into their roots.  They are storing up for a cold winter. This is why I don't cut much down in the garden in the fall.  I want all that green to go back to the roots.... even my roses.  I cut back the extra long branches so they won't break in the wind, but I leave the severe pruning  until Spring.

Did you know that plants do not die in the winter? They are merely dormant - sleeping.  There is most likely more going on under that pile of snow than you or I could imagine.

I really like that idea.

But more about that later.

Before I could bring the roses, I needed to make their bed...

Good soil is the most important thing about gardens.  Like sleeping in a great bed, we get the best rest and the most health... same for plants...

So, I added some Biosol by Fafard (marine compost - 2-1-1) just to give the plants an extra boost.  My local garden centre guru said when he added it to his tomatoes, his kids wouldn't go near them - they grew so fast and so huge, they thought they were magic.....

So who am I to argue with success? When I transplanted, I added bone meal and Biosol, to the bottom of the hole, which I then filled with water and planted.  So far, in three moves, I have lost perhaps 3 or 4 plants.  Pretty amazing when there must be 75 plants…  yikes!

You could add your own compost and some good triple-mix... just make sure you add what your plants need to get off on the right foot.

(By the way, Fafard recently changed the name from Biosol to Sea Compost because folks were asking for sea compost.... smart marketing, right?

www.fafard.com

Here we are - back to October and a load of topsoil has been dumped and the ’boys’ have shoveled it onto the ‘bed I have designed.

The  new bed had a  bit of shape (to be finessed the next Spring) and my wee Braveheart had a new bed and a new bed-partner… a Pee Gee Hydrangea that Canadian Tire was selling for half the normal price.  I love a bargain, don’t you? And wow, is it lovely !

Poor Braveheart (BH) lost a branch or two in the process over the summer.  One day I caught the 'otherwise-careful-carpenter' sawing a board that hung over the end of his saw-horse and bruised and broke a nice side branch.
I had a lot of explaining to do to BH because I had promised when he was moved here, he would be safe… sigh.   I had words with the carpenter and so far, BH was doing fine and lost his pout.

Besides, now he at least he had grass in front and a new bed of good soil. I spent 7 or 8 hours digging out the wicked crab grass to prep the ground for topsoil and sod. (See blog "Weed it and Reap")

What a miserable job.  Those crab grass roots were stubborn and the tops spread out like they owned the place.  

Another week and I would be bringing all my roses to the new bed.... Lots of roses  - 40, in fact - on the road for the last time.

 The Barberry was hoisted up with a crane but it was not happy and didn’t like to be moved and although we did replant it, we shall see if it has decided to stay.

However, the Little Braveheart went with the flow - not like he had much choice but he knew I would not lie and he waited for his turn to be planted again.



Well, here he is planted, but not too happy that he was stuck in the midst of old bricks, dying plants and piles of weeds.  We needed to fix that.

Better, and  happier, but it was hot… really hot, mid-summer and too hot to transplant any plants.

He would have to be patient, my little Braveheart.

Now we  need some sort of bed.....

There were serious things to do before I could get serious about my gardens.


This was the front - (also in Spring) before any construction or digging. The shrubs at the front were too big and overgrown - they had to go before the diggers came.


In spite of my wanting a garden right away, there were some other considerations that made my priorities take second place. Like water in the basement, which  meant digging a large ditch around the foundation.

Besides the ditch, we insulated and put up a water barrier, so those shrubs all had to be moved - and would go to another home.  There was also a very large Barberry (Berberis) in the far right corner of the house that prevented  any side access to the back. It was overgrown and quite thorny and had either be moved or gotten rid of.  We decided to move it.

From the front garden, I really only wanted to save the wee Japanese Maple. You can see it here smushed (carefully, the digger-man says) up against the house in a pile of earth.  I kept telling the poor thing that all would be well and in a few days, (which turned out to be more than a week - eek !)- it would have a nice home and be part of another garden with  new friends.

I am not sure it believed me, but the brave little tree lost not one leaf.

Amidst all the chaos, and the very large teeth of the digger, stones, noise and dust,  the little tree remained brave and intact. “They” say these are hard to grow and are not too hardy.  I (we- he and I ) intended to prove them wrong.

But, there was also, the Barberry.....

What to do next?


 I studied the spaces, the light, the soil, the conditions - all before I could decide what was going to be planted where. My poor plants..  This would be their third move in three years.  Life has a funny way of humbling one into making decisions on the fly - circumstances forced 3 moves in quick succession.

This time my plants would pack their bags again too.

But - this time, we'd be staying for good.  Goodness, so much to do before I could begin to put shovel to earth.

In the early Spring, this is how the  garden - that belonged to someone else - looked.

The front sunny corner (at midday) is on the north side.  There is a Bridal Wreath Spirea (Spiraea prunifolia) hedge on the right that looked marvelous in bloom, a small Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum) in the first photo, surrounded by Perennial Geranium (Cranesbill). 

And, now the work begins.....

Not too long ago, I took my "Roses on the Road"... meaning, I moved and took them with me.

I moved my whole garden -which means all my roses, shrubs, perennials and vines - again. And yes, I too, moved once more - but for the very last time.  When we first saw our “new” house, in January, it was buried under many feet of snow and the garden was a mystery.  There is a Spirea hedge, some evergreen shrubs but heaven knew what else.

The negotiations finished late in the Spring and the renovations got under way in earnest soon after…. but that is another story. My house was  torn apart, and wouldn’t be ready until the depths of the following Winter and perhaps, even early Spring.  And, in this northern clime (Zone 5a), it would be nigh unto impossible to move my beloved garden from the frozen earth and snow that it will most likely be buried under.

But the following October, with the renos in full swing and I needed to move all of my garden before winter set in.

 It’s not as though I could call the movers and have them come, dig up  my roses, hydrangeas, astilbe and such and have them tucked safely in a moving van, all wrapped and cozy for their trip to their new place…. Alas, moving my garden meant I had to dig them up myself, put them in the back seat of my car (because the trunk is full of garden tools) - and schlepp them to their new beds.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Let’s take a step or two back- because the new beds needed to be prepared first.