Expanding the Barn Garden

The Barn Garden (formerly known as the English Garden) was designed and installed in 2010.  Originally, it held only my collection of David Austin English roses.  Over time, some of the Austin roses showed that they are ill suited to life in hot, humid Virginia, and I replaced them with Noisettes. 

One spot adjacent to the garden has always been difficult to maintain.  It's a small area (15' x 18'), with a well head (no power to the well, but there's water in there), an inside corner, and a big pile of rocks.  I need more space for roses, my husband things to be as easy as possible on him when he mows, and we decided that the best way to accomplish both of these objectives would be to clear this spot and make it part of the garden.

This is how it looks from space, courtesy of the folks at Google.

2010, as my husband was helping mulch the newly-planted baby English roses.  Original plant list is HERE.

2014.  Updated plant list at that time is in THIS post.

This garden expansion was easy to accomplish.  I marked the area with string, spray-painted the lines on the ground, and got to work laying ground cloth for the extended path and landscape fabric where the new planting area would be.

Then it was a simple matter of unrolling and stapling more rows of landscape fabric into place.

Laying landscape fabric like this feels like I'm upholstering the yard ... as I unroll it and hammer ground staples to hold it in place, and cut around obstacles like the well head.

After a couple of hours, I was finished.  

Next step is to cut and install 4x4 timbers around the edges of the new bed and to add mulch.  Mulch is very important, because it blocks the sunlight and kills the grass underneath the landscape fabric.  Later this summer, when the worst of the heat is behind us, I can plant the new roses.  Mostly Noisettes, I think ... no surprise.

Reclamation.

Spring has definitely arrived.  Garden work has become Job One, as I weed and prune and mulch.  It feels wonderful to have my hands in the earth again, after what seemed like a never-ending winter trapped indoors.

Waterlogue image of a clump of heirloom daffodils our the front yard rose border.

The Rose Border in our front yard is the first rose garden that I designed and built after we moved here in 2007.  It contains about forty roses, a mix of Noisettes, Chinas, Hybrid Musks, Hybrid Perpetuals, and a few shrubs thrown in for good measure.  It has never been right, as weeds took over quickly, roses outgrew their spots, and deferred maintenance let little problems turn into big ones.  I tell folks that I have learned a lot about gardening in this old farm soil since I did this garden.

This is an early photo that I took with the roses in full bloom, young and still looking nice.  It wasn't this way for long.

I don't have any true 'Before' photos, before I started this renovation last week.  I was more interested in getting things done, instead of documenting the horror to blog about it.   The best I can do is to show you the mat of weeds and the stumps of seedling trees (that were taller than I am).  The weeds are now pulled, and the tree stumps have been dealt with.  Multiply this by ten or more, and you have an idea of how awful it was.

It was SO much worse than this, as the roses were suffocating with weeds that were taller than they were.

Most of the weeds are pulled at this point.

Just a little clump of crawly weeds left to go in this section.

Much better!

Originally, the front edging of this garden was a single row of bricks laid on the ground, and there was no barrier at the fence line between the garden and the pasture beyond, which let Bermuda Grass and all sorts of other creepy weeds in.  The new front edging is made of concrete paver stones, and I laid the curve of the bed a bit wider than it was before.  The back of the bed is defined with 4x4 timbers from our stash of salvaged fence posts.

Landscape fabric is next.  Landscape fabric underneath the mulch has been VERY successful at keeping weeds at bay in the other places where I have used it.  (See the installation in the front Hybrid Tea garden HERE and the English Garden HERE.)

It takes a while to mark and cut holes for the existing roses and clumps of daffodils.

There are 75 pieces of edging at the front of this garden.  It's going to take a while to trench and set all of them.

With the landscape fabric going down,  the blank background made it easy to see the solution to the problem of the rose spacing.  I am moving the front few roses forward about two feet, and it's looking a lot better already.

The arrows show the patched holes where the roses were, and the dotted lines lead to where the roses are now.

I also see where there are a few places in the back of the garden where I can fill in with some roses out of my pot ghetto.

I'm running new irrigation line, too, because the old one was damaged in too many places.

Even though I still have a long way to go before I can say that I'm finished with this, it feels really good to step back and see the amazing improvement that has already been accomplished.

My husband helped for most of the day on Saturday, clearing weeds and vines and trees to free this Crape Myrtle, on the left.  He also limbed up the oak tree, on the right, to give the garden underneath of it more sunshine.

This is the part that's finished except for mulch.

This shows that's there's still more left to be done ... but it's looking amazing so far!

I took those last two photos before supper this evening, while standing in the yard admiring my work (with a glass of wine in my hand).  I can't wait till May and June ... THAT'S when the real reward will come!

Friday Flowers: Changes in the Arcade Garden

Toward the middle of our property, we built a large structure that I call The Arcade (because it has arches).  This serves as a place for climbing roses along the 'path' to the Rose Field and English Garden beyond. 

Like the majority of my gardens now, The Arcade is suffering from lots of weeds and very little mulch.  Storms we had on Sunday made the soil perfect for pulling weeds and, while I was in a holding pattern for the plumbing consultation for The Shack on Wednesday ... I spent Monday and Tuesday getting this little garden back into shape.

I say "little" because it holds only ten roses ... not 'little' at all in reality.  The structure is 54 feet long and 10 feet high.  The bed that holds the roses is 7' wide.

Which roses, you ask? 

1.  'Pink Perpetue'

2.  'Rhode Island Red'

3.  'Sombreuil'

4.  'Isabella Skinner'

5.  'Henry Kelsey'

6.  'Swan Lake'

7.  'Parade'

8.  'Pink Pillar'

9.  'White Cap'

10.  'Compassion'

As I was pulling weeds, I decided that now is the perfect time to make some changes I have been thinking about.  First, though, I had to get the weeds out.

For the first couple of years, I was very happy with my rose choices on The Arcade.  Fast forward to 2013, and I think I'm in the mood for a little change.  Six of the ten roses here please me greatly.  There is nothing wrong with the other four, I just had the urge to switch things out ... to plant four different roses in this garden instead.  The roses that I am replacing are:

'Sombreuil'

Before.

 

Cut back for transplanting.

 

 

'Isabella Skinner'

 

Before

 

Cut back for transplanting.

 

 

'Henry Kelsey'

 

Before.

 

The tag is wrong.  I thought this rose was 'Heidelberg' when I planted it, and I never bothered to update the tag.

 

 

'Swan Lake'

 

The pink flowers are from the next rose 'Parade', arching over into Swan Lake's space.

 

Ready to transplant.

 

 

It is a fairly simple process to dig up an established rose.  Cut the rose back to a point where it is safe to work with, dig it up with as large a rootball as you can handle.  There's no artful spring pruning here ... just cut it back and dig it up.  I put these roses into large pots for now.  They should recover and start to grow again soon, and I plan to offer them for sale this fall.

I don't have photos of the flowers on the four new replacement roses yet ... they're too small and haven't flowered yet.  For the record, they are Movement, Pirontina, Orfeo, and Looping.  (each name links to that rose's page on Help Me Find, so you can see what they look like from other people's photos.)

With the weeds removed and new roses planted, it was time for mulch.  In the past, I used thick layers of newspaper under my mulch, but the soil here degrades anything organic like that at an unbelievable pace ... and soon I'm right back where I started, with weeds and nothing to help prevent them.  Landscape fabric under my nursery benches did a super job of smothering weeds for the past two years, so now I'm using it under any mulch that I apply.  I cut large holes in the landscape fabric for the roses, then I cover the holes with newspaper before adding mulch.

It's no surprise that my two day job stretched into an extra day.  By the end of Wednesday, I had made great progress.  All that's left to do now is to cut back 'Pink Pillar', 'Parade', and 'White Cap' so I can lay fabric and put mulch underneath them.  Can't do that right now, though, because there's a bird nest in 'White Cap' and I don't want to disturb it.

Accomplishments like this serve to fuel my motivation, and I'm all energized to keep at it and see how much of this place I can whip into shape.  Not resting on my success with The Arcade, on Thursday I attacked the roses and weeds in the Hybrid Tea Garden in the front yard (with the generous assistance of my friend Robert).  Weeds there are gone, Preen is applied to prevent any new sprouts, and the first two rows of landscape fabric are down.  Today, it is raining ... which forces me to stay in the house and take a day off from outside work ... but it loosens more weeds, so I get right back at it tomorrow.  (This is really therapeutic!)

What are you planning to do this weekend?