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That looks very nice, congrats.

Oops it double posted & i dont see how to delete but can edit--

This post was edited by bettycbowen on Sat, May 25, 13 at 18:41

I agree, they look very nice.

I have the itch to make a raised bed. I think I want to make one that will double as a cold frame.

Dulahey, that looks real nice. I noticed that you leveled the boxes, too. Well done! Makes for a nice visual on that slope, too.

Looks great!

Beautiful! I am super jealous of all of you organized gardeners who so beautifully lay out their gardens! My gardens are just barely controlled chaos.

Dulahey, It looks gorgeous! I know you have worked very hard to get it done and hope you have a lot of fun with it now.

Lisa, You have a superbly beautiful garden.

All my gardens are just-barely-controlled chaos. Sometimes I have a hard time convincing some of my old farmer friends (you know how much those guys like straight rows of monocrops) that, yes, I really did intend for it to look like this.

We redid the big garden this year, and the majority of it is straight raised beds. I was trying to simplify the use of drip irrigation by being able to run straight lines. Before, it had more of a potager garden look with beds running both east-west and north-south. To me, all those rows of straight east-west rows don't look chaotic enough after what we had before, but they are easier to maintain. They just need to grow a bit longer, maybe, before they reach the usual chaotic state that I am used to.

Chaos in the garden is not necessarily a bad thing.

Dawn

Dawn, I agree. If we had property out in the country, our garden would be more 'chaotic.' I'd use every nook and corner to plant as many perennial edibles as possible.

As it is, our current garden still appears to be so nice, neat and orderly because we are only half finished with it. In the end (hopefully), there'll be plants and bushes spilling over into the paths and basically hiding most or all of those nice, neat, straight lines. This is why it's called our 'Formally Informal English Garden'. In the end, it'll be as overgrown as any english country garden, with plants everywhere you look.

The straight lines, at present, are to ensure that when it is all fully mature that we have enough room to walk through the garden, if only barely. Yes, judicious pruning, pinching and thinning will be required in order to prevent it all from getting totally out of control. At the same time, we hope to allow most of the plants and bushes to - more or less - maintain their natural shapes.

So, Lisa, check back in on our oh, 'so neat and orderly' garden in about five years...or even ten years. It'll still be nice and beautiful. Neat, straight lines? Not so much. ;)

Beautiful!

Jo

It looks very nice and you won't have as many bugs with the mowed area all around.

The title got me. MY garden is never complete always many things half done and something else that needs attention first.

When I wrote that, I think I had just spent time in my garden slightly overwhelmed with the amount of weeds and wild wandering jew or whatever that weed is that are just EVERYWHERE this year. If you stand back, it looks so lush, when you get close it looks like a weed-a-poolza going on in there :)

I do flower garden in the cottage style, so my lack of planning skills can be officially be said to be on purpose...but it's not true :)

Dulahey, it is beautiful. Where did you buy the mulch? I have been putting off mulching because I have an irrational fear of snakes hiding in the mulch, but I know the heat is going to hit soon and I need to get a plan in place!

I got the mulch from Lowes in Mustang. They had lowered the price from $2.49 a bag to about $1.59. They were 2 cubic feet sized bags of cypress mulch.

Cypress was a good to choice to me because it was the cheapest and it seems kind of rough. It's hard to explain, but the pieces are very splintered and it seems to hold together very well. And after last night's storms, I can verify that the cypress holds together very well. As you can see, my mulch is on a pretty decent slope, but it all held in place very well.