What do I do with this yard?
I can become a landscape architect…maybe. Recently I signed up for a landscape design class at the community college down the street, and last night was the first of four classes. The instructor is a landscape architect and has been teaching the class for 12 years. He said that we could all create good plans for our gardens, but that we should plan on spending a year formulating them. This is a relief for me, because replacing the sewer was enough dirt moving for my body this year!
You’ve seen pictures of our front yard with the sewer work and here are a few pictures of the backyard before clearing out all the ivy.
It looks a little bit different today, but not much. I’ve been hesitant to put in too many plants, in case we need to tear everything up when we have retaining walls put in along the back yard. I also wanted a better vision of what we want the yard to look like in the future. I hope to come up with a design that uses our yard as an extension of our house and takes advantage of the areas where we have a view, and at the same time gives us some privacy from our neighbors. Hopefully I’ll be able to accomplish all of that!
I learned a couple cools things and the basics for drafting. He showed some interesting slides of what to do and what not to do with your garden. I now look at each garden I see a little bit differently and look to see if they have a “tree of refuge” or “guardians”. I can describe this in more detail in another post if anyone’s interested.
One good suggestion is to try to go to the nursery every month or two throughout the year to see what cool plants they have. That way when you plan your garden, it will look good all year round, not just during spring or summer! When my body is worn out from working on the house, I can now take trips to the nurseries and parks and start collecting more ideas of what I like!
After I start my base plan, I’ll try to post a picture. I’m excited now, but we’ll see how I do once I try out this drafting stuff! If it actually works and I end up with a killer garden, maybe I’ll have second calling for another career! Right now I just have to finish grading the math papers I brought home before I can work on my drawing.
5 Comments
Jocelyn·April 6, 2005
Sounds interesting. I am very much into gardening/landscaping at our house. We have planted trees and done some things with rocks and of course, plants. I’d be interested to read more, if you feel like posting!
I always thought that would be a good career too. I thought about the Master Gardener certification, which is available free where I live if you do volunteer work afterwards. Maybe they have this in your area too.
Kristin·April 6, 2005
What a cool class! I wonder if there is something like that around here …
I like the idea of an awesome garden but have ZERO know-how.
Derek·April 6, 2005
You’re tired of digging already? Yeah the retaining wall will be a major disruption to the yard, it’s probably best to concentrate on the areas that won’t be affected. We still have dirt piles all over our yard. Deb had to dismantle one of her gardens so we could do the draintile. We have some plants that have been around for a long time, the camelia and the cedars are around 50 years old. It’s cool to take a class on landscaping, I’m sure there’s so much to know.
Trissa·April 6, 2005
I’m definitely tired of digging for a bit. I’d check your local community colleges if you happen to have one nearby. There are other classes in the basics of gardening that I’m also interested in taking. I’d love to share some of what I’m learning. The teacher also talked about environmental psychology and what features people are usually drawn to in landscaping. One of the ideas is that if you have a darker colored door (or a shade of red) people are more attracted to that because it reminds us of a cave. I’ll post more after I get started on drawing my base plan!
deb·April 8, 2005
once you’re ready to start planting after your retaining wall is done we should do a plant exchange! i’ve got some really cool plants, and thompson&morgan is a wicked seed catalogue company (out of new jersey). whatever you plan on your garden looking like, you’ll want to change it over and over and over. this is only my second year of gardening and i’m definetly trial and error- i planted helebores in the sun and luckily i just moved them before it gets too hot out (they’re shade plants). i’m also finding that once something blooms “it might look better over there…”