Preparing and Expanding the Perennial Gardens

Although my husband might disagree, it is my firm belief that you can never have too many perennial gardens.  So, after a few years of threatening to expand my gardens, I decided to go ahead this year.

I always start my landscaping projects by laying out a garden hose in various shapes and looking out the windows in the house to see how it will look.

I tried many different variations this time to try to find a shape that I found pleasing.

Once I decided on a layout, I sprayed the grass with Round-up and waited a few weeks for it to die.

I liked the aesthetics of how the curve around the tree tied the new garden into my bed of peonies. I also want to eventually incorporate the fire pit into the garden with a patio area, but have not figured out that phase of the project yet.  So for now, I just created a small strip of garden to define the curve.

The back-breaking work of preparing the soil then began.  I started by turning over all the sod with a spade shovel.

Besides the shape of the garden, the most important thing you can do when establishing a new garden is to start with good soil. Because our soil is heavy clay, I knew it needed amending.  We added some compost and black dirt and tilled it in several times. I kept adding more compost until I was satisfied with the consistency.

I have started to divide some of my perennials to fill in the new garden, but I have a long ways to go.

I think I will start buying lottery tickets to help with new plant purchases.

In the meantime, my ambitious expansion has created a lot more garden space to weed.  But I am definitely not complaining, because the possibilities of this new space are so fun to ponder.