As my faithful blog readers know, my front yard is a work in progress. I went to a nursery in Smyrna, DE some weeks ago to have a plan for landscaping with native plants done. I was quite excited about it, but when the plan was handed to me, it was nothing like I had envisioned. I had supplied the employee with the best information I could get, including photos of the front from every angle but satellite; the flood elevation drawings which showed placement of house, driveway, septic system, well, etc.; more measurements made by moi regarding placement of objects such as well, septic, trees. What I got back was not a native plants/natural front yard, but an interesting faux pond with a bridge over it. It was supposed to be the starting point of a spectacular landscape at 604. I was overwhelmed for a while, but finally came back to my senses and decided that my project was best left up to me; I would tackle the job a little bit at a time.
The first thing I did was go to the annual plant sale of the Delaware Native Plant Society at the St. Jones Reserve in Dover on Saturday, Nov. 7th. It was from 10AM to 3PM. I got there are 10:10 and missed some plants. I circled around the plot, looking at trees, bushes and herbaceous plants. There were many persons there from the club to help. I finally heard someone talking about what to buy and noticed that he was a botanist. So I waited and spoke with him, telling him of my dilemma of planting over a septic leach field. It was no dilemma to him - he said I needed herbaceous plants, including tall grasses and a dozen or so more species I had not heard of. He turned into my personal native plant plant-a-meadow shopper. Spending money was never so easy. I found myself wanting to buy everything in sight, but there were other people there. So I settled for enough to get me started on my new, exhaustive, never ending project of filling the 100 X 85ft front yard of my house. Except for some larger trees that were spared the axe when clearing the lot for building my house, my front yard is a landscape designers dream or nightmare, depending on attitude.
I told the botanist that I thought I would start with a kind of 'swish' along the septic leach field, extending that swish as plants matured and as I decided to add more plants to the developing meadow. To my surprise, he thought the swish was an excellent decision. So now I had a plan and a car full of plants that had to be planted immediately, if not sooner. Sunday was to be a fantastic day for being outdoors. It was settled - Sunday was going to be a weed-pulling, swish designing, herbaceous plants planting day. Then a fairy plant mother stepped in to lessen my load...
Since I was about 4 miles from Fin's lot, I decided to drop by and see what progress had been made on the construction of the Bay House. I took some photos to send to her, as she hadn't planned a trip down this weekend. Fin had already been down last weekend. I called to tell her I had bought some native plants, that I had some photos of her house that I would be emailing to her, etc. etc. Then she said she would come on down and help me plant my plants on Sunday. Wow - I was happy, as she is a whirl of energy and ideas. She arrived with 2 or 3 doz. fresh oysters. We cooked yet another gourmet meal of both fried oysters and broiled oysters in the half-shell and a Caesar salad.
After dinner came the netflix movie night, after Fin hooked up my dvr which I had for 3 years and was still in it's box. I did a little prep on the plan for the swish and we called it a night.
Today was even better than I had expected for being outside digging, sweating and pulling back muscles. But with my helpful marine biologist/handy gal/native plant enthusiast, Fin, digging and pulling weeds, the time seemed to go fast. (But it really didn't in retrospect).
The swish below after forming and pulling weeds.
Placement of the plants within the swish.
Plants planted and ready to be watered.
Fin left and I cleaned up the empty pots, watered the plants and came inside to drink a lot of water and get off my knees.
The following is a list of flowers I've planted over the septic leach field. Clicking on the common name will take you to a url with information and photos about each species. The urls are for my future reference also.
Forked Blue Curls
Swamp Sunflower
Common Milkweed
Downy Lobelia
Flaxleaf Aster
Blazing Star
Slender Mountain Mint
Blackeyed Susan
Blue Vervain/Swamp Verbena
Little Bluestem
Narrow Leaf Bush Clover
Yellow Indian Grass
Tomorrow I'll be watering the plants and planting three other non-herbaceous plants:
witch hazel, northern bayberry and sweet pepperbush, but they won't be planted over the leach field.
A good time was had by all.
10 comments:
Looking good, though I thought a "swish" was a Nike symbol. Nice choice of plants, especially if they spread as you want them to. It looks like there will be color all through the year. Some of the grasses will look good even in the winter.
Couldn't watch the video 'cause it said I needed to accept your "friend" invitation and provided no way to do that.
Yep, I had to ask the meadow designer too what she meant by a "swish" but once she showed me on paper, I understood. It's serpentine, or an "S" in shape. And I must say, after giving it some thought, the "S" shape is a genius idea because the plants aren't just distributed willy nilly and won't get lost in a sea of weeds, they are in a pattern shape that as they grow, Feef can tend to them easily and even spread them out into a wider "swish" and keep them from crowding out each other and eventually they will spread out on the entire yard.
Plus! Another advantage (that I already tried to plant the seed in Feef's head--heh, heh) is that as her lovely meadow plants propagate and grow too big and crowded, she can thin them out and put the discards in little pots (that she saved from the plant sale) and give to some other nearby property owner who has the same sandy soil and who is recently constructing a home and will need some native plants to landscape with. If not, I guess said new homeowner would have no choice but to go buy some invasive species to put in...
So propagate and grow, grow, grow little grasseys, just like your Fairy Plant Mother says....
I have sent out friends invitations for u tube viewing. Let me know if, when you accept the invite, you can then see the video. This is a new gadget and I need to work out the kinks, unless the contractor wants to share his secret.
One could also say that a swish (or swoosh) is the sound the wind will make when blowing through the meadow, once established.
It's fan-fab-tabulous!!!
Feef, I think you may have inspired me to do something with my tired, hum drum gardens.
I need my own Fairy Plant Mother!!!
and btw I could view the video!!
I think the swish garden is FIN-tastic (if I should say so myself!)
The black eyed susans are back again. It's looking good. Keep watering, but maybe next week. There's been plenty of water over the past few days. I hope you got that guy's email so he could offer more advice. he he ha ha
I hope the torrential rains in DE did not harm the plantlings. Hope you have power and are ok!
XO
The video was great, and I had no problem viewing it. I am astounded at what you and Fin have done! Can't wait to see the end result. P.S. The Nike symbol is a "swoosh," Ed.
The video was great, and I had no problem viewing it. I am astounded at what you and Fin have done! Can't wait to see the end result. P.S. The Nike symbol is a "swoosh," Ed.
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