The Rose Garden

In addition to finishing the front garden we also created a small rose garden last fall. Just like the plants in the front, we purchased most of our plants from Uncanoonuc Mountain Perennials and traveled all the way from New Hampshire with them. We didn't show it off before because it was finished late in the season so there were few blooms left on the bushes. We also used one rosebush that was already on the property, but when we transplanted it, it went into shock and was looking pretty pitiful. The branches were all okay, but the leaves and blooms all shriveled and died as the plant went into lockdown mode to survive the transplant. Now that it's spring midsummer and we can get some pictures of the blooming roses, we'd like to share what we did last fall.

We started with a jungle. The corner by the garage was absolutely covered with weeds and climbing, spreading plants. By the time we started digging things out, there was roughly eighteen inches of some kind of creeping plant, originally from the trellis against the house, covering everything:

We began by tearing out any obvious weeds and the 18" of creeping vegetation, and were surprised by what we found:

This was obviously a well-cultivated area, with some rose bushes, some yucca plants, lamb's ears, daylilies, and a, well, profusion of purple profusion, as well as decorative rocks and other plants and/or weeds. We pulled out and Freecycled the majority of the plants that were good, solid specimens we didn't have an interest in. That included the daylilies, yucca plants, lamb's ears, and the smaller rosebushes. We were able to make some people very happy, which made us (or at least, Ana) happy. Once we pulled out the better plants and the large rosebush, which we would be keeping, we used heavy-duty Roundup to kill the rest, mostly weeds and that purple profusion that keeps showing up everywhere. Roundup does not seem to work on purple profusion.

Once things were mostly dead after two applications of the weed killer, we pulled everything out of the garden, getting as much of the roots as we could, especially for the purple profusion. It seems to spread easily and just doesn't die! We smoothed out the area and pulled out all of the rocks and the random post as well. While they did make a reasonable outline for the area, we wanted a tightly controlled small garden with just the four rosebushes. The grade is low enough that a dark mulch against the street should be as much of an outline as we need, no rocks or bricks or other measures necessary. Hopefully the removal of the post does not cause people to drive over the garden area, but that shouldn't be a problem given the low amount of snow we're likely to see here (update: now that we've had it out for so long - people do not care and drive over the mulch to cut the corner. We need to figure out some kind of "don't drive here" barrier for this and also the corner in front of the house which people drive through despite it being an enormous pothole). When the garden was clear and level, we carefully placed the four bushes, which required much discussion, consideration of how tall and round each bush will eventually get, and a Skype call to Lee's parents to be sure we weren't missing anything regarding plant spacing and had placed the bushes well.

Next was planting the bushes. In order to give each rosebush the best chance of taking root and growing large and healthy, we dug extra-deep and -wide holes to mix compost with the dirt surrounding the bushes' roots. We didn't need to till it into the whole area like with the front garden since we're not planning to have plants covering the space. The soil back here was already pretty healthy. We placed each plant, re-smoothed and -graded the garden, and generously watered the roses and gave them a dose of Miracle-Gro Transplant Solution. We were planting a bit later in the season than we should have and wanted to give our roses every bit of help they could get!

Next, we covered the area in high-quality plastic to keep anything we missed from breaking the surface except for a 3-4 foot radius around each rosebush. We kept large open areas for each bush because they will grow fairly large and we want water and nutrients to easily get at the roots. While digging up the plants we did not want and preparing the sites for the roses, we found a lot of what looked like garlic cloves, maybe garlic, maybe wild leeks, we're not sure. We removed as many as we could, but obviously missed some. Like the purple profusion, they don't seem to care about Roundup. Ideally, we've now dug them all out and should have minimal future upkeep, aside from cutting off the dead roses to keep the blooms going and pruning as needed in the spring (following this guide from Uncanoonuc Mountain Perennials).

Finally we laid mulch and considered it complete:

The three plants from New Hampshire survived the travel and hanging out in pots in the backyard for months; we did lose one (Vavoom) over the winter when a trash bag that was loose in the street got caught in it and the wind cracked most of the canes below ground level. We got a replacement shipped in as an early birthday present for Lee and we now have gorgeous blooms, most of which should keep blooming all the way through until the frost hits this fall.  We finally have a picture that they're all simultaneously blooming in:

We chose four very different roses to give us variety in our small rose garden. The four we have are 'Elena' (large with white blooms), 'The Prince' with amazingly purple blooms, 'For You With Love' with orange blooms (to replace the orange Vavoom), and one random tea rose that came with the house.

All in all, it's an excellent little garden and we're quite happy with it.  The neighbors agree it is far superior to the weeds and as the roses get bigger and more full (and get pruned into better shapes) it should hopefully keep getting better.

It's Been Awhile, Again

Well, we said posting would be minimal, and we weren't lying! We're a month in to the semester, and things are very busy. Working, reading, trying to keep some level of social life (it would be nice to know some people over the next three years) and sanity, meals...we're making sure it all gets at least sort of done, but our schedules are definitely overfull. We've been taking the bus, which gives us some time in the morning and afternoon to do something non-work related (Lee: or as also happens, more work stuff), and have been getting stuff done around the house when we can. We've had a few things going on at the same time, with some setbacks in each as happens with such things, but have finally finished the front garden!

 Starting point. Some scraggly plants, a lot of weeds, everything patchy and overgrown.

We had hoped to get a lot further with the outside areas by this point, but we've got Virginia Creepers. Some people, myself (Ana) included, react to this plant as if it were poison ivy. We learned this the hard way, and consequently did not have as much gardening (or anything else) done as we originally intended, as I was having severe allergic reactions and Lee was sick. Knowing what we wanted out of the grounds, in general, we asked for some landscaping advice from Lee's professional parents and picked up a (very full) car load of plants when we visited New Hampshire before classes started. We hoped to get things in the ground quickly, but classes started and daylight hours at home with time to spare have been minimal. We started by digging up the big things we didn't want in there and Freecycling the ones that were good but not for us. Then we outlined the desired space with some rope:

After cutting out the edge and tweaking it until we liked it, we sprayed the area with weed killer to get all the grass and other undesirables out. It took roughly two weeks before it killed what it was supposed to kill, so we waited until we had this:

Almost ready. We would need to till in some compost to make the soil better for our plants and break up the existing dead roots, but we also needed to dig up the drainage pipe that was connected to the gutter downspouts. These pipes are fairly common in this area to help rainwater drain away from the house. Ours was buried too close to the the surface (showed through in several places) and had a fairly ugly opening on the end:

For our nice 3-day Labor Day weekend, we planned to dig up the old drainage pipe, bury it deeper, till the front garden area to prepare it for planting, and maybe start putting things into the ground. That did not exactly go as planned.

We did manage to get the pipe out and re-buried. The two days we were working on this, it rained. Poured. It was very, very wet. We played in the mud anyway. The real problem was finding a second pipe system underneath the first one (were we wanted the first one to be), so after determining that the second pipe system served no purpose (Lee: I'm 99% sure it was an improperly installed French drain - tilted uphill, bone-dry on the inside during a rainstorm) we ended up digging out all of one and most of a second, since they were both in the way of planting. The first pipe runs along the entire length of the house, coming from the back gutter drainpipe to the front. Eventually, we got it all out, and back in, and the sun shone all Monday when we were back inside doing the homework we didn't do Saturday and Sunday because we were out in the mud. Of course. At least it was done, and done right, and just about ready to plant.

 Now we just needed to figure out exactly where our plants were supposed to be. We played around with a few configurations, placing the pots here and there, and Skyped home to Lee's parents to get some more input and be sure we were placing each plant in a pleasing place, far enough away from its neighbors that when they start filling in, they won't be overcrowded.

We tilled, planted, re-planted a couple that weren't quite in the right spot, and mulched. Now we just need to keep it all watered and happy, and in a year or two, we should have quite the front display!

Now to make the rest of the property look as good. I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.