The Garden Gets Cleared

Right front of new garden area

We are now three days into clearing the thicket from the area that will be the garden. It's about half and acre and is composed of a big gravel area in the middle where a greenhouse used to be, a poured aggregate driveway, a well house, and a bunch of scrub land. It's bounded by the main street, our neighbor's driveway, our driveway, and the shared driveway for us and our other neighbors. I thought it would be a lot more open after clearing everything out, but I'm not going to take healthy oaks, and there were more of them than I thought there were. But that's okay: the oaks provide shady areas in which to put benches, bits of art, sculpture, fountains, etc.

Left front of new garden area

The only bad thing is that I was planning on putting 4 ft by 8 ft vertical panels made of 4-gauge wire staggered across the front of the property on the main road to serve as privacy screens and supports for the espaliered fruit trees and passionfruit vines. But there are so many oaks left out there that the trees won't grow on the south side of the panels--too shady. I could put them on the street side, but that would be facing north which is bad for light in summer and winds and cold in winter. I'll figure it out. Maybe I'll put up a fence along the front similar to the one that fronts our main yard along the private drive. It's the same wire either way, just put horizontally instead of vertically. Then I could save the vertical panels for screening in the middle of the garden--make it so you have to walk all the way in to see everything. Yeah, I like that.

Fence by the front lawn

I ordered several books earlier this week on growing plants for natural dyes. Many of them can be sown directly into the garden and will yield a good dye crop the first year. I didn't get much more than a quick glance through one of them during lunch today, but it was enough to make me drool. Tomorrow, a longer perusal leading into a shopping list and actually ordering seeds so I'll be ready to plant when the beds go in week after next.