Garden De-Construction!

 The last time we encountered the garden apprentice was in Calgary, happily building 4x4 raised beds and making grids with cotton twine for plantings.  It was fun and the garden and I got along very well.  Thanks to the very knowledgeable gardeners who took me under their wing at the Silver Springs Botanical Garden in the North West part of the city, I learned so much and was the recipient of some great booty in the form of plants and seeds.


So...new house, new garden and endless possibilities but first....de construction.  I have to say that no loving care was given to this plot of land after the first initial plantings in the 1990's.   Juniper was allowed to run wild behind a hedge of bushes that had no business being a hedge.  Creeping Jenny was choking  the rose and covering up struggling lillies.
Landscape cloth - rotten under  a layer or gravel had weeds and quack grass growing up through it.
Oh...and landscaping wood borders were rotten and full of icky bugs.
So...first things first this late winter/ early spring.  Some of the hedging bushes had to be removed and the juniper tamed.

then the layer of rocks had to be...shall we say...relocated.and as much of the rotten landscape cloth as we could, torn up, along with the quack grass roots.   This is high desert country and there are lots of rocks here, big ones, small ones and some in between.

The space is starting to take shape.  Some early planting carefully put in - and edging started with some of those rocks I told you about.
So, the next task was to tackle the insidious Creeping Jenny.

I was feeling quite kindly toward this stuff until I started trying to dig it up.  I even put some on the bank close to the juniper.
but after fighting with it today I have to say most of it went into the green garbage for pickup.
It was doing a fine job of choking out this pretty white bush rose.  

Here we are - finally - took me over an hour to dig up the horrible creeper and I'll have to keep an eye out for errant roots I guess but I feel like I won that battle for now.  Still lots to do ...and we haven't even started on the back yet - well...Libby has - she is having a lovely time digging out there. That's the thing about gardens isn't it.
And on we go.  It's raining now, time to cozy up to the fire and knit I think.