Tag Archives: back patio

Stewing Over the Herb Garden

Posted on by

When I came up with my master plan for the herb garden, I wanted everything in that bed to be either edible (but not vegetables) or flowers that had a medicinal uses — basically not just another flower garden. I was hoping to plant all kinds of herby things that I had never grown before. Part of my inspiration for this was from one of my former tenants — Kaitlyn, who was really into herbs and making tinctures, etc. When we lived together she was volunteering at a farm garden and was always bringing home stuff I had never heard of. So I thought it would cool to start growing some of these things too.

Off to the happiest place in the world — Portland Nursery — I went with a shopping list of the fun I wanted to get. Of course they had all of the basics — basil (6 kinds), sage (4 kinds), oregano, thyme, blueberries (4 kinds!), strawberries, lavender, mondara, etc. But I wanted new things too. However when I started browsing around, they didn’t really have anything that I would consider special. Sad. So I came home and started planting away, including all of the herby things I had brought with me.

herb garden start

I plopped my bounty in the ground but things looked pretty bare.

herb garden 2

The blueberries are between the long walk and the patio, with chamomile and callengula. Transplanted a chive, but still not enough to fill things out. So the compromises began, starting with a trellis of morning glory that can up from seed.

lily in the dirt

I moved some lilies from a pot and put in some more monarda and Hyssop (from Kaitlyn). The pots will have herbs that are notorious for getting overgrown — lemon balm, oregano, mints.

After planting everything I had on hand, I was frustrated and didn’t want to run all over town finding plants that fit the plan. So it has kind of become a free-for-all.  But it is finally looking less sparse. I think this will be a work in progress bed and I will move the plants out to other places when I find things that are more inline with the original goal.

herb garden first planting

It will do for now. Doesn’t look terrible and I know that things will grow.

Steps in the Right Direction

Posted on by

Part of my love of English gardens includes quant paths for strolling through all of the flowers. And in my mind, paths should be flagstone. I did several little flagstone paths at the other house — some turned out great, others not some much, and one I redid like 4 times and still wasn’t crazy about it. So I know all of the hard work and drama involved in flagstone paths. One major thing that had changed since the last time I made one, however, was the price of the stones. At the old house, stone were, on average, $3-$5. So some of those projects got kind of spendy. But a trip to Home Depot and Lowes showed that for whatever reason, flagstone had gotten crazy expensive! $9 a stone. So considering I had to cover 29 feet in a straightish line, flagstones was now way out of my price-range.

Digging around on Pinterest, I found what looked like a good solution — Flagstone shaped concrete. Basically you buy a mold that is the shaped like flagstone pieces and dump mixed concrete into it. My first adventure with concrete was a nightmare but after using it to patch a wall in the basement, I have gotten pretty good at dealing with it. (Sometimes it makes me sad that I have developed certain skills.) Anyway, the mold was $25 and bags of dry cement are $2.50, so this route was definitely within my budget. What could possibly go wrong?

Turns out, nothing! The hardest part of this project was hauling the bags of concrete out of the truck (hardware store guys put them in there for me — thanks again guys!) Then just dump the cement in the wheelbarrow, use the hose for the water, mix mix mix, scope out the wet cement into the mold, smooth, move to next mold. I had 2 molds so by the time second one was filled, the first mold was ready to be moved down the line. Whole process was crazy quick!

short path

This project was crazy easy — mix concrete, pour into mold (seen leaning against house) smooth out and move to the next one.

long path

This is about 20 feet long and only took me about 2 1/2 hours to make. I love how it looks!

long path not done

Once again bad at math — I under calculated the number of concrete bags I would need to do the last few feet. No worries, easy to mop up after work one evening.

I am so excited about how good it looks — can totally imagine lovely green things growing in the cracks.

Black Death

Posted on by

I really prefer English cottage style gardens with tons of flowers and tangles of color vs. structure and boring. And I love regency novels where proper ladies spend their mornings cutting flowers and arranging them (or having a maid or house keeper, etc. take care of that part). I also like to cook, so having a fully stocked herb garden close by sounded like a good plan. So I envisioned a lush little area with stone paths lining a mix of herbs and edible flowers, throw in some strawberry and blueberries to stop and nibble on framing my little back patio. I’d spend summer evenings surrounded by the smell of sun-warmed herbs and flowers, bees buzzing, while I grilled or relaxed with a beverage after a long day of work. Heavenly!

What I don’t love is mowing the lawn. And my new lawn is HUGE! So kill two birds with one stone by making a new bed around the back patio that will be primarily for herbs and maybe some cutting flowers — but I want everything to be edible.

But First I have to get rid of the grass. After digging out the new beds in the front yard, I knew that trying to remove that quantity of sod by hand would officially kill me. So I welcomed the Black Death.

Black plastic

I laid black plastic to kill the grass and put all of my pots I moved from the other house and random bricks for the crumbled retaining wall to keep it in place.

Now hurry up and wait — which is challenging since some of the plants in the pots are going to want permeant homes soon.