NEW GARDENS AT THE FARM: Kitchen Corner Patio Garden

May 22/10
We've made draft plans for the first of our gardens - the Kitchen Corner Garden. The only feature there at the moment is the light standard so we're starting with a fresh slate. It's a wonderful shady corner in the morning and a sunny spot for the rest of the day.

To take full advantage of this space Terry suggested we build in a sitting area. We've never really used this spot for this before but we tried it out and it should be a great spot to enjoy a coffee in the morning and a glass of wine in the evening.

Our initial plans have foundation shrubs along both walls and perennials at the front. It should be quite pleasant! We tossed around removing the rocks from around the light standard surrounding the hostas but decided to leave them. We've drawn up the plans - I just have to figure out how to import a PDF document to insert it here :)

May 24/10 Success! I redrew the plan in Viso so that I could save it as a JPEG. Visio's easier to work in anyway so it was worth the effort. We visited the local hardware stores and have decided on a patio stone from Home Depot called Portage. It is irregularly shaped but fits together nicely. This will give our patio an informal air but still be easy to work with. I've pencilled in where some of the perennials from my poor neglected bed will go to rescue them from the invasion of the weeds! We're still researching the shrubs we'll plant so they'll be added to the plan later. We've pencilled in a water feature of some sort but haven't seen/found one that grabbed us yet.

We marked the border with a hose today and put two chairs where the patio will be. Next weekend we'll start excavating the gravel that is hiding under the clover.

May 30/10

We finished excavating the area for the garden and patio this weekend. We just had to do a test layout of the patio stones to see how it will look. We created a new look - a sunken patio :).

As we were doing this we realized that we'll have to get the roof repairs completed before we go any further.... Stay tuned.

July 6, 2010 Our Canada Day Weekend Project

The roof repairs aren't done yet but we decided to go ahead with the patio anyway. Evan was home and happy to give us a hand. Terry marked out the patio perimeter so that we knew where to lay the landscaping cloth. Then came a layer of gravel first followed by crusher screening with top soil on the perimeter for the garden. Once this was done the packing could begin.

The lazer level helped us to get the base for the patio level. From there we were able to put a slight grade on the path to bring it to the same level as the sidewalk. Laying the stones went really well thanks to the level base - except that it was 33 degrees C! We found ourselves chasing the shade. The end product made it all worthwhile :) Evan is seen here trying it out.

July 22, 2010

We've renamed this spot in our yard to the Kitchen Corner Patio Garden. For the past couple of weekends we've been working on the gardens. It's been fun selecting the shrubs and perennials to plant. For a seemingly small spot it has taken a huge number of hours to seem like we were making progress. These pictures show the layout of the new shrubs (Pictures taken July 18/10).

With a sense of where the shrubs would be I set out redraw the specs for the garden and to add the perennials. (If you'd like to read the details click on the image.)

"Trimming" the gravel bed supporting the patio to make the garden as big as possible proved to be a tedious job. We left the landscaping cloth in place between the top soil and the gravel. I ended up scooping the excess gravel and crusher screenings out with my hands and a spoon!!! It was worth the effort though. The gravel pad now has fairly straight sides and is well supported by the topsoil. The top soil was pretty light so we added a fair bit of mushroom compost. Once that was done all that was left to do was to finish the planting, cover everything with mulch, and add more pointing sand to the patio.

Terry working hard with trencher

We decided to add a low pressure irrigation system to make watering the gardens easier. We bought all of the hose and sprinklers from Lee Valley. Terry manhandled the trencher and dug over 300 feet of trench in one evening...and cut the phone line and the wire to the submersible pump in two places - both were no where near as deep as we thought they were!! Good thing Terry's good at electical wiring :) He was able to get the pump going in just a short period of time (in the dark, being eaten alive by mosquitos). However, the phone line needed a visit from the Bell technician :(

July 23/10
I finished the Kitchen Corner Patio Garden yesterday! I'm so pleased with how it turned out. There is lots of space between the plants for them to grow to their full size. It looks a little bare now but I know it will fill in with time. Now we have a wonderfully relaxing place to sit when we take breaks from working on the other gardens! :)