The "I Used to have a Lawn" Garden

1 The “I used to have a lawn” Garden
Every landscaping project ought to have a plan. Ours is a 5-year plan;
quite reasonable, not including instant gratification! We chose a color
palette of yellow, red-orange, and purples, and our philosophy focused
on “natural”; drought & deer resistant; and of course, low maintenance.
In our first year 5, we were fortunate to be covered in an international
design magazine. In year 6 & 7 we coasted, and year 8 & 9 we neglect-
ed! This year (year 10) with just two of us working 2 afternoons a week
March to June, we are back on track again. Not quite all done in time
for this tour as you will see.... but because of our initial plan it has
been an easy & fun task of revival & redesign.

The heart of our landscaping is our Rainbank© rainwater collection
system. Our barn roof can provide over 35,000 gallons of rainwater
to be collected (given our 20” annual rainfall here on Shark Reef ), al-
though our current storage capacity is 20,000 gallons, and in the rainy
season we use liberally as we collect. Our custom designed triple -
filtered system is used for all household needs as well as landscaping.
Please enjoy a taste! 

Mello Yello is my modified 1950 Chevy truck, color-coordinated with
the yellow in our landscaping palette, of course!

PLEASE RESPECT OUR NO ACCESS SIGNS!

Then & Now. Previously a respectable if drab Texmo shop building (the
neighbors hated it!), so we made a few changes, and Presto! an historic
Lopez wood barn! We then designed a welcoming hedge of bamboo to
define the entrance to our landscape and residence; resulting in good
Feng Shui, and happy neighbors! We researched & selected Fargesia
robusta, a non-invasive clumping bamboo. Can you believe that both
sides of the driveway were planted on the same day?….. just shows
what happens when water for your plantings is stolen by the roots of
large trees. Beware!

Everyone thought it would look awful, but we did it anyway. We
topped the barn-side bamboo hedge to follow the angle of the roof. Of
course it worked, and now ever yone loves it. (Either we’re good design-
ers or we’re very lucky)!

The area bordering our neighbors to the north was quite scruffy, and
is now a “green belt” zone of salal, wild grasses, ferns, and Gigantia
starts.


“Natural” has its limits you say; where’s the Lawn? What you’re look-
ing at is neglected feather grass after a hard winter; this pic is what
Mexican Feather Grass (Stripa tenusisina) looks like when it is well
maintained. Ideally, feather grass should be cut back at the end of July
(new grass shoots will appear by the end of August), and/or all the
old clumps pulled out after 4 or 5 years, allowing the many naturally
seeded “grass-lets” to take their place. We give away flats of feather
grass seedlings ever y fall when we weed out the excess! This image
was taken Memorial Day 2006, & is an inspiration to us to get with the
program again!

People have been known to come down our driveway in July & August
to OOOOH and AHHHH at the poppies. The Red-Orange Flanders, or
corn poppies, seen in the corn fields of Europe are an annual which re -
seed; some years more abundantly than others! The Papaver rhoeas,
also called Heirloom or American Legion Poppy, was a symbol of war-
time sacrifice. It particularly likes to take hold in the gravel, and is not
sympathetic to being transplanted. Please tr y avoid stepping on any
wayward poppies!


This is still a working shop inside, with an exterior façade of re -
claimed wood from a dismantled Hood River, Oregon saw mill. I talk-
ed to someone recently who remembered the Hood River mill, and
I found some old newspaper images of the interior, which showed
boards with yellow/crème paint very much like the wide boards on the
deck, with the crème paint still evident on one end. The steel windows
were designed by James, and allowed to take on a patina of “natural”
rust…yes, natural, and not from a spray can. This is definitely a “Barn
for All Seasons”

The wine rack sculpture is a tribute (or protest) to the high cost of
recycling wine bottles on Lopez Island. We recently planted purple
Polish Spirit clematis inside the rack, and we expect this “living”
sculpture to make the history books. Doesn’t everyone plant clematis
in a wine rack?

The pathway is still under construction…we’ll follow nature’s example
with this one...and plant abundant French moss in the crevices…….
More purple……check out the concept image on the left….. This will
be a priority Fall 2011 project.


Golden Chain, Laburnum, has pendulous “pea” type flowers ver y simi-
lar to Wisteria, and some years their bloom coincides! We inherited this
tree from the former owners, but only with some very radical pruning
several years ago (removing about 60% of the tangled inner branches)
did it come into its own. Though pretty spectacular right now, this is
in fact an “off ” year. (BT W: listen to the humming as you stand and read
this………)

Come back in August or September (by appointment only please) and
view the grass action. Or you can find some images online in my arti-
cle “I used to have a Lawn and now I have a Natural Environment” We
‘har vested’ some images of the poppies and wild grasses overlooking
the water, and then recreated the similar environment here.
When friends have in the past participated on their Garden Tours, they
race out to the local nurser y and stuff their gardens with newly plant-
ed fare. You CAN tell! Well, I have to confess, the new Iceland Poppies,
which may be blooming nearby, were my effort to simulate the corn
poppies, which unfortunately are not ready...


Everyone should have a garden ‘sanctuary’. A small enclosed garden.
This was a major aspect of our design concept in 2001, and we would
have been closer in the Wisteria department this week had we not
done such radical pruning this past Februar y! The fence wood is re -
claimed, from a yet another NW saw mill. The ‘Asian-Fusion’ design is
totally in sync with the inside of the house….. I believe your landscape
design should harmonize with the interior as well as the exterior of
the home.

Our color palette has some leeway of course….. the “pink” Mother’s
Day Azellias from the previous owner are now pruned into user friend-
ly egg shapes, and apart from these there is not much else left in the
garden from before. Calla Lilies have become an important and inte -
gral part of our design ever y year; sometimes we select yellow, other
times flame, and sometimes a combination.

Keeping everything to scale is quite challenging ….. plants grow,
and what was per fectly to scale last year, looks oversized & overbear-
ing today! Sometimes you must have the courage to prune it or yank
it!


When it’s your time it’s your Thyme! Demolished by rabbits from the
neighbors, we have now almost revived our Thyme Lawn; simulating
a color ful glade of wild flowers in the forest. We have removed the
herbs, which were part of the original plans second iteration, and we
just replaced the dead Rosemar y border on the wall with Cotoneaster
(white flowers now and red berries in the fall). Our neighbor feared the
invasive running Golden Bamboo would take over lawn, but alas, her
cedars have stolen the nutrients & water, leaving the bamboo smaller
than when planted 6 years ago! Those bamboo are out of there in the
Fall ....

What is a pest in one location can be a godsend in another. The Carex
“Ice Dance” was invasive and overbearing in our enclosed garden, so
most is gone, and transplanted to several problem areas. The pathway
border at the other side of the stone steps ahead, has always been
where we “plonked” things we took from elsewhere, a sort of “reject”
border, but it looks like our “ice dance” problem grass may have found
a home. The New Zealand Flax, not really a grass, yet with ver y inter-
esting attributes, still manages to dominate from their rusty steel
architectural cubes.


Put down your roots, and reach for heaven. There is something
ver y nostalgic about vines growing on a trellis or pergola; it’s ide -
ally suited for an old European cottage or large majestic estate.
This one is a combination of the Lemon Meringue Climbing Rose
and the Polish Spirit Clematis; both have done well in this loca-
tion and I chop it just above deer height every other year. The
Hops vine around the corner in a pot, a gift from my friend Karen,
was unsuccessful inside the garden last year. Now, being mostly
sheltered from the afternoon sun, it is way happier, and I look
forward to a mass of yellow leaves all summer, not to mention the
interesting fruit …. I cant wait!

Container gardening has the mobility advantage. When the
rabbits demolished my herbs planted within the Thyme lawn, I
took the opportunity to start my mobile herb garden. So far the
herbs have been pretty much chilled, with a one -day exception
last Sunday, when they cooked! I’m looking forward to have an
abundance of herbs for cooking, and if they don’t work out along
this fence, I’ll just move them to another location. My initial 2001
drawing showed an herb garden where the Iris are growing today
(#12). Well, that didn’t work……so be prepared to plan, and then
change your plan if it doesn’t work. The key here is still planning!


Espalier is the ar t of training a tree or shrub into a two dimensional
plane, usually on a trellis or wall. This image is of the Rosemar y I spent
several years fussing over; however last year both the trellis & the
living art had timed out, and had to be removed to paint the house.
Sadly, I was unable to find another Rosemary plant large enough to
get started ~ not all bad as we’ll try something new this time. I found a
flat-growing specimen of Privet (same stuff so many hedges are made
of ) and here it is…another dream in the making…you can see I’ve
started fanning out the branches. Stay tuned....

Once in a while you have a location where nothing works, or not for
long anyway. Check out the trellis to your right…. we tried Fig, Potato
Vine, and Clematis, which worked for two years in a row (image left)
….. and now with the success of the Climbing Hydrangea in our en-
closed garden we are tr ying a variety called Miranda.

The Privet espalier will be more formal; while I anticipate the yellow
green Climbing Hydrangea will take on something more free form. I
love the variegated leaves and how they match the yellow pot.

The large black pots with Gigantia will be pretty impressive when they
flower.


A view for all seasons. The lighthouse on Cattle Point (San Juan Is-
land) has to be my most photographed shot….(maybe even more
than the cats)….I’ve photographed it through all the seasons with the
thought of doing a calendar; however I ended up with over 60 good
shots and was unable to choose just 12! The lighthouse on Cattle Point
is especially reassuring during our long foggy winters.

We are almost 100’ above the San Juan Channel, on very sandy, fast
draining soil. Sometimes we can see the lights of Por t Angeles to our
south, and planes landing at Friday Harbor to the west (the house fac-
es WSW ).

Wild enter tainment. Both the deer and the eagles can be pests, but
since we derive such pleasure from watching them, we have tried to
create an environment where we can co-exist. We do leave the vegeta-
ble gardens to our neighbors and the local farms, and are not quite so
forgiving when it comes to the rabbits…..James is envisioning a rabbit
stew.... We enjoy several Orca displays each year as they cruise up and
down the channel. And of course there are the boats, which go from
birds floating on logs to mega-yachts to “ The World” condo cruise ship
which visited our channel on July 4th several years back……


“Location Location Location”….The original, quite ordinar y, house
was built ca. 1990. After an extensive remodel, this was the image that
made the design magazine in September 2006. The “shake” roof is recy-
cled rubber tiles (600 old tires did not go into the landfill!), the pergo-
la was built from reclaimed wood which spent its first life as a Western
Foods warehouse outside Vancouver BC. The new deck was built from
materials recycled from the original deck, and Ipe from a sustainable
forest. Many things we removed during the remodel were recycled to
other Lopez homes, and others brought in came from various old NW
buildings to have a “second life” as part of our home.

Meditation in a busy world ….. think about little spaces within your
landscaping design where you can just sit and be quiet…… this one is
in memor y of ‘Miss Coco Chanel’, one of our ver y special feline friends.

I have always wanted a grape arbor. I had visions of sitting under
the grape leaves shading me from the hot sun, reading and sipping
my vintage wine. Wrong choice for an often cool and ver y windy wa-
ter front location! But we kept tr ying; and the small red ornamental
grapes reached as far as the overhead after 4 years. Then two win-
ters ago they froze. I didn’t have the strength to start over. When it’s
wrong, it’s wrong. Don’t push it!


Our dry pond now features Siberian Iris, blooming today. I am plan-
ning an expansion here in the Fall. The Rosemar y & other herbs plant-
ed originally (as in the original plan) were a disaster.

After the remodel, our wood-fired hot tub burned all the appropri-
ate construction trash for 3 years, creating our day-end hot baths! At
one time I computed the kilowatts of heat energy we created from our
trash and it was an amazing amount.

TopCat, aka Cappucino, aka Chino, spent the last 9 of his 20 years
here on Shark Reef. One of his great joys in life was “nesting” during
long summer days in the Feather Grass, especially right here. He wrote
about his latter days in guest posts on my “Blog” “Cat on Steroids”
“Cat in Overlife” “Cat from the Afterlife” and “All’s well that ends well”

OK, just ignore the area to your left. Beautiful, me thinks, in its disar-
ray of mixed wild native grasses (often referred to as weeds!). When
you don’t have a fenced in or walled area, it’s always a problem to
define where you STOP with your care & feeding..... Well, you can see
where we stopped!


The “Patina of Rust” once a symbol of neglect and decay, is now
totally stylish, and some even consider it a status symbol; building
multi-million dollar houses with a rusty appearance from the get-go
(‘rust-in–a-bottle’). We used rust in our initial 2001 design to add color,
texture and a sense of age. James designed all the rusty pieces on the
house and barn & in the landscaping. (he also finds this a clever way to
dispose of unwanted old car parts from his hobby.....)

You never know what works until you try it. This is true for many
things in life, but especially gardening. Who would have thought that
succulents can thrive in our climate? We had several spectacular years
but ‘they ’ came again (the rabbits), and so we have not restored our
succulent bed again….. but its next on our list I promise you! (right
after that rabbit stew....)

The bamboo on your right is a Mystery Bamboo, given to us by friends
Murray & Marriette. Anyone know what it is?

We hope you’ve enjoyed your journey through our “natural” landscape.
You’ll be able to review it online, later today, at INCLINEDESIGN.INFO,
and look out for a follow-up post of our actual tour event.
God’s speed and happy landscaping.
Caroline & James 9 June 2011


14 The Quilts in the Garden

BARBARA CARVER

DARLENE DEMETRICH

JOAN THOMAS BARBARA GONCE

NANCY CALESHU

JOAN THOMAS
GONCE & THOMAS
NANCY CALESHU
DEBORAH BUNDY

The "I Used to have a Lawn" Garden

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