The Country Mice

Looking down from the house toward the road

After much scraping and hauling and dumping of rock the ultimate form of the garden begins to take shape.

A word on the piece of land formerly known as a lawn:

Our house is perched up high in the woods, 530 feet above sea level. Nothing compared to my father’s tract of Manitoba farmland — approximately 780 feet above sea level, as he always takes care to remind me — although (Are you listening, Dad?) I can see the sea…

Many houses here are perched, as it were, and in our case, the perchable rock resides at the terminus of a former logging road.

Around the flat spot of rock where sits the house is a fairly sharp drop-off. If one wants to make functional space of the drop off, one builds a retaining wall and hauls in fill — rubble, mostly, which gets topped with a small layer of dirt and in this case, some grass seed. The final effect is always pleasant — giving visual space and more often, a place to park the car!

In this case we needed to haul in soil because under the grass there was only a bit of dirt concealing metres and metres of rock and rubble. No soil. The yard couldn’t simply be ‘dug up.’

There’s a reason folks call Bowen ‘The Rock.’

Subsequently, because of the substantial slope of the lawn, rock was hauled in to provide a wall to keep the soil from running off down the road to the Pacific.

Same view, turned slightly to the left. Beyond that retaining wall is a drop-off, a reminder of how much fill was required to bring the original lawn to its present height

The new soil will be beautiful — weed-free, rich and fragrant — but will always need to be amended with compost to hold the moisture and give it nutrition — remembering there’s nothing below but rock.

Looking up toward the house

You can start to get a sense of the lines of the garden-to-be.

On the right side, a narrow path will travel between the original retaining wall and the new wall of the garden.

Mid-garden, running horizontally in the picture, will be a narrow path walled by rock, creating a bit of a terraced effect.

Three garden areas to be planned in total, all defined by stone borders, the borders holding the earth in place.

Looking east toward the ocean

This side view shows the central path and also that we’ve lopped out a few scrubby and unhealthy bushes and relocated the healthy ones. The intent is to bring more light into the garden. And the surprise, as I mentioned earlier, is a delightful view of a secret little bluff. I’ll get some images of that.

I did learn something about transplanting big and small trees and bushes from Wynn that I think is worth passing on: When first transplanting, give the roots a good soak and then a good watering every three or four days. Meanwhile, give them a light foliar spray three or four times a day. With the foliar spray, take care not to add water to the root ball, just the leaves.

We moved three full-grown and substantial trees, two cedar bushes, one forsythia and several lavender plants which all survived, did not droop, etc. Unusual for me!

Next post: Playing in the mud.

Have a great day and thanks for dropping by!