Why Am I Mowing All This “Lawn”?
Planting in progress!
That’s where this project started. Me, behind the battery-powered lawn mower (works a treat!) navigating the base of the big hackberry in the parkway and having a think.
Then I combed through my village’s website to see what the rules and regs were for parkway planting. Finding not much, I reached out to the village forester, who couldn’t find much either. Shout out to Greg, our awesome village forester, who is on board with keeping the giant hackberry going as long as possible!
I volunteer for our local garden walk each year, well, because I can. They have been eyeing The Weedpatch and asking me when they can put it on the walk. I chuckle in bishop’s weed and creeping bellflower and keep saying “two more years”. However, I have been able to pull this shambles together a bit more and the sedge experiment has yielded results.
Time to get serious about being garden walk-ready.
Between cussing out the “lawn” and looming garden walk pressure, I decided to add beds to the front. This has resulted in meeting a bunch more neighbors, friendly dogs, and slightly dubious children.
The brief: dry, part shade perennials that are somewhat native and shorter than 18 inches.
The plant list (in no particular order):
Heuchera ‘Autumn Bride’
Geranium ‘Rozanne’
Geranium ‘Bevan’s Variety’
Penstemon hirsutus
Carex pensylvanica
Veronica ‘Waterperry Blue’
Eragrostis spectabilis
Sedum ternatum
Solidago flexicaulis
Symphyotrichum ‘Snow Flurry’
Polemonium reptans
Coreopsis ‘Uptick Cream’
as many crocus and tiny daffodils as I can stuff in
I laid out beds with an old garden hose as it allowed me to do gentle curves and it stays put when laid down. Then I went back and measured so I could draw out the design and figure out plant quantities. Perhaps a little backwards, but it works for me.
The “lawn’, and I use quotes because it barely has enough turf grass species in it to merit lawn status, was herbicided. I found that wintercreeper (Euonymus fortunei) had moved in thanks to birds dropping seeds. Grrr. Because we went on vacation for Memorial Day, the husband kindly did mulch runs to the municipal pile so the beds looked purposeful and not just random dead stuff.
Adding planting beds has emphasized how huge this hackberry really is. This will also add some soft landings for the critters.
Yesterday was install day! I was able to plant straight into the dead material. The perennials and grasses are in, but I ran out of gas to get the sedge planted. I also want to add some things that weren’t available at time of planting. Now I get to water it this summer. Wheeee!
A video tour:
A walk through the newly installed perennial beds.