VERY Nice!

That is beautiful, thanks for sharing the picture.

Larry

That's BEAUTIFUL!

Jo

It looks gorgeous! I'm glad you have it right out front where everyone can see it. Your beautiful and productive garden might inspire other folks in your neighborhood to take up gardening!

Dawn

Thanks for the compliments. It was a lot of hard work. About $1500 bucks has been invested in amendments, plants, edging and such. In two years ROI, it's already paid for itself.

Every square foot has some form or amount of amendment in it. It was mostly yellow clay, to begin with. Most of the compost -nearly a ton of it- came from our own compost heaps. I usually have three or four compost heaps working.

We do get a lot of 'lookie-loos' driving by. About once or twice a month someone will stop and visit and look it over.

The goal is to get every square inch of it into production, while looking good, too. Sod, hopefully, well eventually be replaced with creeping thyme, corsican mint and such.

This project hasn't been accomplished overnight. It wasn't an instant landscape. But, a little here, a little there, and it's starting to look pretty good. Plus, tasty, fresh veggies, now and then...and filling the freezers, of course. I'm basically planting or harvesting year around, down here in Stephens County. Takes a little planning and taking some chances, but it's worked out well for us, so far.

Beautiful!! And you're so fortunate not to live in a neighborhood that forbids vegetables in the front yard. But I am curious to know if you've had any veggies disappear when you weren't watching. 18 years ago my daughter had a small garden in a streetside yard in Denver and the cucs and pole beans disappeared. She caught the culprits one day. It was a pair of brothers--about 4 and 6--who were picking and eating them raw. Daughter hated to say anything as the boys looked like they weren't well taken care of.

It's a relatively small town. I just figured that the back yard was too small and really belongs to my wife's dogs. The front yard was big enough, but...If I were going to put in an edible landscape, I'd make it look good. No one is going to holler if I make it look nice. That was part of the thinking.

The other part is that when we bought this place, the drainage in the front yard and driveway all ran to the foundation of the house. I had to change that w/o changing the overall direction of which way the runoff drained. In the process of getting the runoff to drain away from the foundation, I ended up with this garden.

The overall drainage on the lot runs south by southeast. I didn't change that, nor did I make it run north by northwest or something equally stupid. The overall drainage still runs south by southeast. I'm not flooding someone else's property, nor is theirs now flooding ours. That's about the only landscaping code I have to deal with, here.

In short, I didn't ask anyone's permission. otoh, I've done this sort of landscaping in years past, in locations where the codes were somewhat more...stringent. So, I already knew my limits and had some idea of industry standards.

- and I'd learned which way the locals in this town leaned, so to speak. Plus, the landscaping was a real mess when we moved in, and it is now well on the way to being extraordinary. If I'd just laid out a traditional garden with rows, people might have a right to holler a bit. Instead, I went for well-landscaped and extraordinary.

The only problems we've had wrt others in our front garden were feral dogs, cats and kids. That's no longer much of a problem. The biggest problem has been from that damn squirrel, getting our tomatoes before they're ready to harvest. He'll be on the menu, if he keeps it up this year.

Beautiful garden! I hate those tree rats, too.

totally AWESOME!!! I really really like it. Thanks for sharing your pictures.

Moni

Again, thank you for the compliments. I sincerely appreciate it.

I'm going to share two of the sketches and drawings for this garden, if you don't mind too much. I did have a plan! Of course, while everything's still going according to plan, the original schedule is shot to hell. 'Flexibility' is a word I've had to learn to appreciate with this garden....

The point of this is that almost any kind of garden takes a little bit of planning. With a more formal design, more planning is necessary...even if - and when - your schedule gets shot to hell.

Oh...the main garden is 63 feet long by 33 feet wide. The driveway is fourteen feet wide at its narrowest and 23 feet wide at its widest, just to give some context and perspective. All together, on this small 1/4 acre lot, we have somewhere around 2400 sq ft of beds.

{{!gwi}}

This pic is of the original planting diagram for the permanent plants.

This was the next to last draft.

Most of these plants still need to be bought and planted. I hope to begin that process this fall, or no later than next spring. Until then, I'll use those beds for veggies.

Your garden is really nice. It gives me some ideas too for my new place.
Kim

I like that very much! Congratulations on seeing the fruits of your planning and hard work. I have things I'd like to do in my back yard, but...they're still floating around in my head, sometimes appearing on paper :-)

As for your squirrel...be glad there's only one! My dad set a live trap last year and caught 14 (which he carefully relocated to more appropriate surroundings). This is in a regular OKC neighborhood. I'm in The Village and have plenty as well...may have to borrow his trap this year and see if it makes a difference in having my green tomatoes nibbled on and drug across my lawn (!)

Sharon