Next Chapter of Garden Saga

We interrupt seriousness for the fun of what happened to our garden in the next chapter of its transformation.

Greenhouse

The first addition was a greenhouse. We had tried a cheap “grow house” of metal grid shelves in a reinforced plastic shell that zipped open for access. No matter how we tried to secure it to the fence, storms blew it to pieces. We had been lusting after a proper greenhouse anyway. A lean-to style seemed ideal. The tallest retaining wall gets full sun all afternoon all year, soaking up warmth. Between that and the ground behind the wall, winter temperatures in a lean-to greenhouse should be nicely moderated. (Spoiler: They are.)

While I was away on business, my wife and her parents surprised me by installing the frame. It’s a good thing they did. It turned out to need tools V’s dad has that we don’t have. I’m told it was a pain in the you-know-what. I am deeply grateful to V’s parents. The result is exactly what we hoped for.

This photo was taken when only the frame had been installed.

When I got home from my trip, V and I installed the glazing. We got tempered glass. Polycarbonate isn’t quite as clear. Horticultural glass is fragile and would not survive storm winds, which the greenhouse catches unimpeded.

The two plant benches that fit between pillars allowed us to grow potted plants up where Bertie wouldn’t pee on them. For the first growing season, we kept them in place. I shortened the one in the greenhouse so we could put the frame from the failed growhouse inside as a shelving unit.

The greenhouse frame is mounted to pillars on the retaining wall, so most of it is a few inches away from the retaining wall. With polycarbonate and some aluminum angle pieces, I made a fitting for the gap between the top of the frame and the retaining wall. It stays in place with just gravity and adhesive, so the only drilled anchors are in the pillars. For the summer of 2021, the greenhouse looked like this.

Storage

Supplies were still an issue. (Acquiring a suitable greenhouse took months.) We would get what we thought we were going to need whenever it was available. If we changed our minds, we didn’t want to waste anything. We repurposed materials we had bought for projects we decided not to do.

The big green box at the right of the greenhouse frame picture stashes four folding chairs that go with our patio table, a small metal fire pit on metal legs and a bag of charcoal. We haven’t used the fire pit, but it’s there in case a patio visit needs a little warmth. I need to modify the box to make it easier to use, but that is not urgent.

The boxes for materials we set aside to be recycled cluttered our back porch. We made a storage unit there. It holds recycling boxes, a sun lounger, our wellies (Wellington boots) and various gardening tools. We love it.

Those two storage boxes used up most of the repurposed wood.

Behind the Gabion Wall

Watching where the dogs tend to run and play, V saw that they didn’t tend to use the strip of grass immediately behind the gabion wall. She wanted the back of the gabion wall to be prettier and the dogs weren’t going to trash whatever she did there. She put in a row of hebes. They grow just tall enough to peek above the top of the wall. She puts a few low-growing annuals between them.

More Drainage Before Winter

Now that one winter had proven the value of a French drain, V brought Charlie in for another project. The most important part was a French drain for the lower part of the back lawn. We agreed not to bother with the bottom corner that gets no direct sunlight. Eventually we will put a shed or summer house or workshop there. The weight could break a French drain underneath it. Charlie needed a power digger this time.

As with the first drain, we put cleanout access at the end. By now, the elements of the drain are familiar: pipe with slits cut into it for water to seep through, landscape cloth to reduce infiltration of silt, gravel and a tie-in with the storm sewer system. As winter came on, this drain did for the lower back lawn what the gabion wall and first drain did for the upper back lawn.

Do you wonder what the black drum with a green panel is? It’s a composter. Where I grew up, if you just pile up some organic matter, it decomposes relatively quickly. Here, it takes ages. This composter doesn’t make large quantities, but it accelerates decomposition. Its color absorbs heat and we can easily rotate it every day or two instead of digging to turn a compost pile.

V had discovered that with the back garden prettier, whenever we had a sunny day in the summer, she liked spending time on a sun lounger in the area that gets the most sun. The dogs don’t happen to romp there. She had a couple of stone circles put in. Plants in large pots grow there and there is a level, firm footing for a sun lounger (or two).

The greenhouse, like the veggie patch, has become mainly V’s domain. Even there, pots did not make her tomato plants happy enough. We moved the plant benches to the slate chip square in the lower back garden. Charlie built a deep planter box at the back of the greenhouse and mounted a spare trellis above it for plants that need support. He also laid paving slabs as a floor in the greenhouse.

V had Charlie extend the fernery that is terraced alongside the steps at one end of the gabion wall. Grass was not growing well in the shade of the buddleia. Ferns would love the shade. She also had Charlie put in a footpath from the top of the steps to the greenhouse and across to the patio chair storage.

You can see the top of the gabion wall that I mentioned in an earlier post, made of decking boards that are 6 meters long to match the length of the wall.

Summer 2022

Garden changes take time to settle in. At the height of last summer, this is how the greenhouse looked.

The tomato plants thought they were the beanstalk Jack needed to climb. V kept having to trim the tops as they tried to poke through the roof. In 2021, we had a halfway decent crop. In 2022, with deeper soil, the plants were heavily laden with delicious plum tomatoes.

Peppers love the greenhouse too. They grow in pots on the shelves. Cucumbers grow in pots or grow bags on the floor. Herbs grow in balcony boxes on the front of the tomato planter.

We are glad we ended up with this greenhouse model where the door is so wide. We are also glad we got an automatic opener for the ventilation panel, which opens wider than the original manual lever allowed. Our main problem with the harvest was that a few days were so hot, a few tomatoes began to cook on the vines. If we didn’t have so much ventilation, the heat would have been a bigger issue.

In 2021 we put rails along the fence for our balcony boxes so their plants no longer intrude on a neighbor’s view. We got more balcony boxes and filled the rails. Here you can see Swiss chard, Chantenay carrots, baby spinach, dwarf beans, snow peas (mange tout) and lettuce.

In the corner that has slate chips, we had dill, strawberries, more dwarf beans, potatoes in grow bags, and a few more balcony boxes to the left that you can’t see here. Balcony boxes and potato grow bags are mostly mine to manage. I still find it amusing to eat food from the fence.

I’ve mentioned before that our longest plant bench proved too tempting for people attending an outdoor birthday party here about a year ago. Three people sat on it. Then Zola hopped up to join them and that was more than the bench could handle. I didn’t see it gradually fold over to the ground. I’m told it was hilarious. Nobody got hurt, so I’ll believe them.

I rebuilt it with reinforcements. They can all sit on it at once now. It’s on the square of slate chips at a spot that gets great sun in the afternoon. But its main purpose doesn’t seem to be as a bench. Small niblings use it as a work table for their projects.

The shorter plant bench is in that corner too. I used scrap wood plus two more boards to make a deeper planter for strawberries, matched to the footprint of the bench. The strawberries seem to want more depth than balcony boxes and commercial strawberry planters offer them. We are waiting until after the last frost to set it up.

This Coming Summer

As soon as the weather eases, we’ve got trellises to put up along the tallest retaining wall. V wants to plant something at the back of the stone circles that climbs and can take advantage of so much sunlight.

The grapevine is gone, so the veggie patch will have more runner beans this year, climbing the trellis. We also plan to have sweet peas there, climbing the tipi.

Gardens are always a work in progress. We intend to take a breather from big projects for a year or two and focus on making the most of what we’ve already done. The house would like a little attention too.

But the front garden beckons. Last summer, with neighbor Sue’s expert help, we put five dwarf fruit trees there. They have to be dwarf trees, carefully positioned, to avoid damage to the water company’s big pipes.

The front garden is whispering. It says it is unfinished. It says it deserves to be as lovely as the back.

We’ll see how long V and I can hold out before the whispers seduce us.