Author: Liz Braithwaite

Designing a Garden

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I designed gardens this years and also installed a few. I’ve recently had some thoughts about the designs and garden designs in general. I read this post about how garden designs aren’t great. I have to disagree a bit: garden design are tremendously useful. But there should be some disclaimers about them as well.

  • Designing a garden is never quite done because the garden is living. Plants will need to be re-arranged, thinned, added to, moved, and even dug out and thrown away. No garden is ever really completed.
  • Every plant reacts differently to a different environment, and every garden has its own unique environment. I can get what I think is a perfect plant arrangement on paper, and it might be in certain situations. But  it could turn out that a certain plant or plant combination just doesn’t work. It doesn’t mean the design is wrong: it simply needs to be modified for the specific situation.
  • Starting out with a design (that will most likely be modified) will mean there is somewhere to start, something to work towards, and something to modify. It’s better than no design at all. Garden designs turn gardening into an enjoyable, manageable task where everything is eventually able to come together and create a unified appearance.
  • Designing is essential to get a good backbone to the garden. The plant material will be adjusted over time as it grows (or fails to grow), but basic plant arrangement, lines, borders  and the structure of it all can be defined by an initial garden design and won’t change too much.
  • Good gardens only come about with good maintenance. Even a low maintenance design needs a watchful eye.

I’m putting this out there, but I’m also moving across the country. Any garden I’ve designed, or you would like me to design, comes with a free yearly consultation by me to see how it is coming along and offer suggestions on continued development. All garden designs really are a first draft, one that will need to be modified over the years.

Christmas Activities

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We went up to Temple Square on a cold night last week and enjoyed all the Christmas lights and a bit of choir music. Always a fun place to go for Christmas.

Last night we made gingerbread houses. You can look at the houses below and guess which one is who’s. My husband, Peter, my grandma and I all made one.

Okay Peter’s was pretty easy. Mine is the one with a mulched landscape. I cared more about my landscape then the actual house, and I think I’m the only one ever who put “organic mulch” down around a gingerbread house. Joe’s is the most architecturally interesting and detailed. His took a while, but turned out awesome. (He’s quite a good artist.) Grandma struggled a bit with hers, but it turned out pretty cool. It was a fun activity to do together.

So there is still lots of packing to do. I really haven’t started and I’m moving in less than 3 weeks. I’m excited. But I really need to start packing.

Some of My Approaches to Gardening

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Never worry about pests until you see them. Then make sure you identify them and know what damage they are going to do. Most of the time I never spray, just accept the damage as part of gardening. This results in a huge decrease of chemical use.

Stuff dies. The difference between a thriving garden and one full of dead plants, is the people with thriving gardens threw away their dead plants and tried again.

Weeds are acceptable. Some are very pretty. I love the violet-clover-lawn in the back. Even the dandelions are beautiful. Manytimes weeds are just filling in niches, not overtaking other plants. If a weed isn’t ugly or offensive, I don’t worry about it.

Weeds are also a lot easier to deal with when they are tiny.

Black plastic mulch is wickedly awesome for vegetable gardens and cheap online. Use bark mulch everywhere else. Unless you are trying to grow penstemons and other plants that hate good, moist soil.

There cannot be too much compost in the garden. Unless you are trying to grow penstemons and other plants that hate good, moist soil.

There are plants that will grow in every situation. So instead of trying to change what you have to get a plant to grow, find a plant that fits the situation.

If a plant is pretty, not encroaching on anything you don’t want,  and you aren’t going to get fruit off  of it, it doesn’t need to be pruned. Except for roses, which is why I really don’t like roses.

Deadheading is usually overkill. But extremely enjoyable if you want to stop and smell the flowers.

Gardens are more meaningful if they are yours: if you planted and cared for the plants. But start small so you can enjoy it and it doesn’t turn into a monster chore.

101 Miles Hiked

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This Saturday we bundled up and went on another hike. With another 2.5 miles, this makes 101 miles for the season. I reached my goal, with a few weeks left. (With busy weeks ahead though, this might be it). We started at Dry Canyon trailhead in Orem and hiked on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail over to the Battle Creek trailhead. It was a nice, easy hike with great views. There was lots of company too-we saw bikers, runners, horses and dogs. It was a cold day, but we stayed warm all nice and bundled. Peter walked quite a bit, although he is a little slower and curious then his parents might like. He was also content to be on daddy’s shoulders (and luckily daddy is okay to have him up there). It snowed a little bit that morning, which was lots of fun. We probably aren’t getting much snow this year so we have to enjoy the little we get now. Now for pictures, which mostly feature one adorable little boy. He’s actually starting to pose.

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Rose

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The calender is more right than our minds. Winter has not come, even though we are anxiously awaiting blankets of snow and singing carols about sleigh rides. It is still fall. This single rose has clung onto fall far longer than the rest of us. Protected by the house, it has not noticed that temperatures have dropped into the 20’s. I never look at this diminutive rose bush in the regular season, but now it is the highlight of the whole garden.

Good Gardens

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Sometimes I get tired of seeing sights like this:

Fruit trees over pruned in late fall

Living in a community that seems to have a lot of do-it-yourself gardeners who don’t care that much often leads to a bunch of boring landscapes and horrible errors. But I wanted to get away from that for a second and show two landscapes recently that are spectacular. I’m too busy wimpy to talk to the actual owners, so just enjoy street pictures. Both front landscape feature an utter lack of front lawn. That’s not what you first notice however (some lack of front lawn yards are pretty scary), but a simple sidenote on the end. The first thing I noticed on both are plant composition.

Landscape 1

They’ve filled this front yard with contemporary style landscape plants. Nothing spectacular about the plant choice, but the overall composition is beautiful. Best part is every inch of space is packed with plants, and none of it is lawn. The only hesitation I have about this is that I hope they picked dwarf cultivars of about all woody material, because if not, this landscape will be pretty overgrown in five years. I took this picture just over a month ago, right when the mums where making a colorful appearance.

Landscape 2

This has a more naturalistic fill, using mainly rocks and ornamental grasses. There’s a little too much Karl Forester, but I still was quite captivated when I passed by this front yard. The grasses combine with the evergreens to create a great look now in late fall. This picture was taken a couple weeks ago, when I was fortunate to catch ornamental grasses at their peak.

I hope this has been a good distraction from pending snow and also presented some better options than lawn for the front yard. Again I want to point out that really what caught my attention wasn’t the lack of lawn in the front yard, it was the presence of a variety a plants and lots of thought behind them.

Stressing

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So never move around Christmas time. I have a billion things on my mind and it’s making me a bit bonkers. I’m trying to figure out Christmas, finances, moving, along with all my regular daily tasks and a two year old. Two-year-olds are very sweet, but at the same time I am tired of answering the question, “What that?” There is also a general lack of cooperation in many tasks.

But there is lots of  good news. We have found an apartment, hopefully. I’m waiting to sign on it until I can see it, but it looks good. Hotels are reserved. I’ve figured out what I’m getting everyone for Christmas, I just need to finish making a few things. And the finances are working out great, in spite of my worrying. And when I get upset and all stressed Peter does the cutest thing. He’ll grin at me (very cheesily and often through tears) in this specific way, and it means I’m supposed to cheer up and smile back. And it does manage to cheer me up a bit.

And one click shopping is not cool. You have no time to think through the purchase, it’s just suddenly done. Very convenient, but I don’t know if that is such a good thing. (What I did buy doing that, I did actually want. It just surprised me how quick it happened.)

Thanksgiving

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I’m grateful for change. The next move will make five since I was married three and a half years ago. But each move and coordinating life change had brought lots of excitement and helped me grow lots. Going cross-country will certainly bring new challenges but I’m very excited for them.

I’m grateful that I am having another baby boy. I love feeling him move inside me, and looking at tiny diapers and realizing I’m going to have another little kiddo to fit inside. Peter gets to be a big brother too, which will be lots of fun.

I’m grateful for the end of gardening season. This year has been a blast with all the projects I was able to work on. I saw a couple of my designs go in, maintained several landscapes, and was able to put lots of input into other people’s gardens. I grew a nice crop of vegetables and today discovered that blue hubbard squash makes excellent pumpkin pie.

I’m grateful for my husband and all the hard work he puts into school. Pretty stocked to have a physical therapist for a husband and graduation is only a year away.

I’m grateful for my grandparents. Living with them has been quite the fun experience and I have learned much about generosity and selflessness. (And aging. Not too excited for that.)

I’m grateful for the Gospel and the knowledge I have of the atonement. I love that I am able to learn so much of Christ in my life.

I’m grateful for Life, because it is awesome.

Landscape Bids

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I was recently asked to look over a few landscape bids for a friend of mine. The project was mostly a large stretch of  lawn. I was a bit taken back by some of the practices that they listed.

Bagged lawn clippings: All that specified how to do lawn care maintenance mentioned that they would bag and take away all the lawn clippings. It was stated like this was a good thing, preferable to other methods. Oh my. Basic good garden techniques: leave the clippings. They basically add the equivalent of a pound of nitrogen a year. As long as you are cutting the lawn regularly and using a good mulching mower they aren’t a mess. Even then, they disintegrate within a couple days. If anyone out there is still bagging, please stop. Your lawn will thank you.

Lawn spray program: This is included a four step fertilizer program, complete with weed killers, pre-emergent, grub killers, etc. Never mind that there isn’t actually any crabgrass or other annual weed problem in the lawn to necessitate a pre-emergent, or any widespread grub or insect problems.  As mentioned earlier, bagging clippings would add a pound of nitrogen, meaning one less fertlizer application is necessary. I still thing four step fertilizer programs (as seen advertised by fertilizer companies) is excessive. We’re not talking about a sports turf or heavily used lawn. Most of the lawn is hardly used. Two, maybe three applications a year would be sufficient to maintain a green healthy lawn. And wouldn’t it be great if one of those applications was actually a layer of compost? I also don’t like that the chemicals are going to be poured on, without monitoring for possible weed or insect problems that might be present first.

Those were my two main problems. I wish all companies would include more detail on their bids. Saying that the lawn will be maintained doesn’t give me much confidence that the company will actually be there no less than once a week making it look great. It was also interesting to see the bidding price. Anywhere from $8,000 to $1,500. The lowest was underbid, I’m wondering how they stay in business charging so little.

If you are thinking of doing landscaping, seriously consider looking into buying this software. It makes the whole bidding process a lot more manageable, and includes information on sustainable practices.

Big News

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So this past week we had our twenty week ultrasound. The baby is healthy and normal and we found out that it was a BOY. It is ultimately what I wanted so I’ve very happy. Peter gets a new brother! He moves around quite a bit and I already feel big and uncomfortable at times. I still have four months, including a cross-country move!

Peter is very cute and seems to understand perfectly well that there is a “baby in mommy’s tummy.” He says that a lot, sometimes very randomly. We’ve been going to toddler gym at the local rec center where they do exercises and other activities. He loves that and will either want to go to toddler gym, nursery, or Grandma Claire’s about every day. We’ll do each about one a week plus story time. That kid loves to read. He’ll read with me for over a half hour. But according to him, he still likes Sesame Street better.

It also snowed and stuck for the first time. It was fun going out and playing with Peter. He wanted to dig in the snow and got out his trowel to do so. Here’s a bunch of random pictures from the last few weeks:

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