Rethinking the Garden (Again)

 

 August 6, 2024 was the last garden group of the year, a bus tour of around thirty very nice Master Gardeners from the Portage, WI area.  It is always nice to share the garden with people who have the same passion as we do.    

For some reason, I also felt compelled to share with the group the fact that we hope to be doing some major renovation work this fall, especially to the Pachyberm in front of the house and the Quarry area as well.  

For years, Carl has been adamant about the need to downsize at least fifty percent in an effort to be able to do something else during the summer besides weed, mulch and repeat ad nauseum.  I grudgingly agreed, but was always dreading the prospect since there are many plants and trees which will need relocating during the downsize.  And, in the case of the trees, survival is hit or miss due to their age.  'Dwarf' conifers may be smaller than their standard counterparts, but they still become quite large over the course of twenty years or so.  

Finally this spring, after hearing Carl fuss about the amount of work we have to do one more time, I am now committed (or should be) to moving forward with an overhaul of our two most difficult gardens.  Our intent is not to remove them entirely, but remodel them into more easily manageable landscaping, but still remain aesthetically pleasing.  It's a tall order, but we'll do our best.

I related my renovation plan to the tour group as we were strolling around and was met with a lot more skepticism than I thought would be possible from people who had never seen the place before.  One lady had been here before, years ago before our house remodel.  She took me aside and said, "You must not redo the Quarry!  You will kill your husband, it is too much work, leave well enough alone!"

Well, I'm not intending to kill either one of us, as far as that goes.  The upkeep alone is wearing us both out and we do want to garden as long as possible.  

When we built the Quarry and the Pachyberm in 2001 and 2009 respectively, we did not have the equipment we have recently acquired.  Placing over 700 tons of large limestone with an old farm tractor and a hand-crank wrecker from the 1930's along with crowbars was a challenge when we were in our forties to be sure.  Now that we are both sixty-six years old, we finally have our own used excavator which will make a world of difference in moving the big stones and the soil.  We're not naive enough to think it's going to be a walk in the park, but change is always a constant in any garden.

The Quarry has suffered from the rocks settling since 2001.  Woodchucks have been the biggest problem, digging tunnels and undermining the structure.  The pond itself is not very deep as it is all sand with no liner, and the water table fluctuates greatly from spring to fall.  A year or two ago, the farm fields to our north were tiled to drain the surface water off, and the water table in the pond has drastically been reduced as the aquifer must have been affected.  We've had a lot of rain this year and the pond has never rebounded in depth.  Now, instead of water, all that is visible for most of the year are the wild white waterlilies which have taken over.

We hosted our annual friends and family booyah party (for those unfamiliar, it is similar to a chicken stew cooked over a wood fire) on Sunday, August 11.  Once again, we told our visitors about our plan to remodel the garden and the comments were about the same as the garden tour earlier.  "How are you going to do that?!  Are you going to take all the rocks out?  Where are you going to put them?  What is it going to look like?  What will happen to the trees? Will you still have a pond?  Will you dig it deeper?  Fill it in? How are you going to get the excavator down in the pond? Are you sure you want to do this?"

Ah, good questions.  The answer is we don't know.  Carl said he wants to take it down to a blank slate and see what happens.  Some trees will have to be moved, some can stay, but in the end, we just don't know.  We survived (barely) the house remodel in 2019/20.  We used to get comments (suggestions? critiques?) that our house didn't match our garden--one visitor went so far as to say, "The last time I saw your house it was really rundown, this is an improvement!" 

Um, thank you, I think.  You have to have thick skin, let me tell you.  Callouses on your hands from weeding, and a good filter on your tongue when hearing opinions about your personal spaces. Some will always find fault, human nature, I guess.

We have no more garden events for the rest of the year, so we're getting the tractors and the excavator ready to go.  We've had rain again the last two days, an inch again today, a half inch yesterday, and more forecast for Saturday, but after that, things look like they will be a bit drier.  Joel is on board to help us with the digging when he's got the time, which we greatly appreciate.  I've operated the excavator a few times, but I'm not great with it yet as it takes practice. 

I've spent hours online looking at ponds and waterfalls and pros and cons of a water feature again; I've looked at just filling in the pond and having a sunken garden with high stone walls, we've thought about putting in a liner and having a smaller, deeper pond, or maybe a disappearing waterfall or..........well, as Carl says, we'll see what happens.  We won't know until we start from scratch once again.

The part of garden we both like the most is the 'Escarpment' which is adjacent to the Quarry.  Just sheer stone walls with minimal planting spaces that require far less upkeep yet still look wild. 

Part of me is excited, it's fun to create something new, the other part of me is dreading it, but we have to do something as the stonework is failing and we need to make things easier.  

Maybe we'll just push all the rocks into the hole and plant grass. 

Here we go.  Again.

P.S. Would you look at what climbed into our big ol' Buick tonight?  Didn't I just say I have to move trees?  Oh, well, what's three more.  (There's two ginkgos in the front seat, one in the trunk.) 

They were on clearance and they needed a home.  

Somewhere around here...