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.