Garden design

This is how it all started!

Have I mentioned that this is how I got started gardening, about 42 years ago? So, I was 14 and we moved into a new house with no front garden. My mom asked if I’d like to help her design and plant grass, flowers, and trees to make our new front yard. I suggested a […]

Another huge flowerbed! Or why to rip out more of your lawn

You may have seen our post from last year about our huge flowerbed across half of the front yard. This year, we decided to complete the landscape by mirroring that addition across the central walkway to the other side of the yard. As I sit here on July 5th, I can say it’s been a […]

DIY trellises and lashing technique

We needed to create a long trellis for the raspberries this year, and we decided to DIY it, learn a little lashing technique, and use some handy leftover branches from last year’s prunings. This was especially cool, since we’re trying to spend as little money as possible during this pandemic recession! After we finished, though, […]

Gardening through winter – what worked well

One of the reasons for moving back to northern California was to garden through the winter, and it hasn’t disappointed. This is the first winter with our new, large flowerbed in the front and our raised veggie beds, and we took advantage of those spaces to grow more winter flowers and a few vegetables. We […]

Adding a huge flowerbed to the front yard

This year, we got bold with our newish-to-us house and went for a major transformation of the front yard by replacing some of the lawn with a huge flowerbed. We considered taking out all the grass (which honestly, includes its fair share of weeds, clover, bermuda grass, and who-knows-what!) and making that half of the […]

Raised beds for veggies!

I’ve wanted to build raised beds for some time, and we decided this was the year to go big for our veggie garden! I came up with my own design idea, but I’ll tell you what I’d do differently in a minute. We had to make some decisions on lumber, placement, hardware, and irrigation, which […]

A visit to Temple Square

Earlier this week, I took my camera to work and took a walk to Temple Square during my lunch hour. I wanted to get a few shots of the long, narrow flowerbeds by the lawn between Temple Square and the church office building. I could use some ideas to make my long, narrow beds look […]