RoughDesigns

Grounds Work - The FUN Work!

 

Planting and Planning for smarter, easier, self maintaining landscaping.

The Garden

 

Tradition, and it's fun to grow what's easy, pick it, eat it.  Just need to keep that in perspective.

 

Worked out by accident a great weed barrier system, no weeds, soil not too warm, not too cold.  With drip irrigation, a MUST, gardening is easy

Daylilies in the wet spots the lawn mower sinks in (finally after 50 yrs of that silliness).  Also helping to define property edges.

High - high planter boxes, soooo much easier.

Perma - beds - minimal care (finally, after 50 years of sun baked drudgery).

A new Lilac Hedge to define a fence line, at which time, no more fence to maintain - and a happier neighbor during the spring bloom.

Expanding the Iris, Daylily and Peony populations.

Adding new and exciting peonies and daylilies.

Spreading a dozen varieties of Forsythia.

An eco - war between a patch of Japanese Knot Weed and myself, which I'm winning armed as I am with giant 12 foot Forsythia.  I guess the forsythia are invasive too, but, pick you poision I guess.  I'm pretty sure forsythia use less water than Japanese Knot Weed.  I know forsythia are the ONLY plant that can out compete Japanese Knot Weed.  I don't know why NYC DEP dosen't have their hundreds of workers out planting forsythia shoots to fight back against the massive incursion of Japanese Knot Weed along all the streams in the NYC watershed.

Reclaiming the edges of the property from the rampant advance of mother nature - a decade or more of neglect on some of the fringes led to some day long battles.  Luckily, I've worked out the right, and CHEAP combination of plastic and fabric mulches, along with salvaged materials, that let me lay down a barrier that will last a decade.  A long cry from the yearly clearings we did for decades.