Skip to main content

Landscaping by Design

We’ve been taking a three-part “California Native Garden Design” class with Orchid Black at the Theodore Payne Foundation. The intention is to figure out what to do with all of the rest of Farmer Karen’s land that surrounds the vegetable garden.

That is a big swatch of space. (We know: we measured it and drew a scale plot plan of it.) It’s a corner lot, so it has “yard” on the south side instead of that useless skinny strip that separates houses. Between the labor and the cash, Farmer Karen is envisioning this as a phased project to be achieved over an undefined span of time.

But even if your first step is the parkway, you have to look at the global stuff first. That includes:
  • What native area is your land located in — woodlands, desert, chaparral, river wetlands?
  • What space do you have?
  • What kind of sun do you get?
  • What kind of soil do you have?
  • What kind of slope(s) do you have?
  • And, oh yes, what is your goal?
If you have a speaking relationship with Mother Nature, you need to have the answers to the first five questions before you define the last one. You may want a ferny glade with all your heart, but you will work like a mule to get it in a sandy-soiled desert.

Step 1: The plot plan

We started with a Google satellite view image of Fink Estates. That was traced in PhotoShop to get a working diagram to make sure we captured all the necessary measurements. Then we transferred the measurements to 1/8th scale squared paper. Make that several papers. A quick moment with the calculator showed that we would need to tape pages together to hold the full plan. Then we made copies at Kinko’s and maybe someday, we’ll actually ink in the lines of the original.

The glory of a plot plan is that you know at a glance what you’re dealing with. It also allows you to take plants you’re interested in, make scale circles or rectangles and lay them over the plot plan to see how things will fit. And given that little acorns grow into a California live oak that is 82 feet tall with a 13-foot in diameter trunk and a leaf umbrella who knows how wide, this is important to know. 

Given that it may take 20 to 70 years to grow that size, you may want to have circles of varying sizes to represent how the landscape will change over time. You may start out with full sun but when that tree grows, you’ll end up with a shady glade.

Step 2: The soil test

Once upon a time we’d done a soil test for the vegetable garden. But that involved sending a sample to a lab and getting back a report with a lot of information about the soil chemistry.

Orchid recommended two simple soil tests:
  1. Soil composition: Fill a quart jar 3/4 full of soil. Add water to fill the jar. Let it settle several hours. Then add about a tablespoon of alum (a flocculant for those of you who like sexy words). The alum makes the particles in the soil clump by type and layer in the jar so you can see the proportions of sand, clay and other materials in your soil.
  2. Drainage test: This involves digging a hole 8 to 10 inches deep and 6 to 7 inches wide (about the size of a gallon pot), filling it full of water and timing how long it takes for the water to drain out of the hole. Some experts suggest doing the test twice in the same hole to see how much variation there is.
The soil composition test for Fink Estates wasn’t very exciting. There was very little distinction between layers. (Actually, there was none that my inexperienced eyes could see.) Orchid’s assessment was that it was pretty heavy in clay, which is typical of a Southern California housing tract.

The drainage test, while tedious, was eye-opening. The first draining took about 30 minutes. The second took an hour and a half. This was another sign of clay soil: the clay absorbs water from the first test and holds it slowing the draining in the second test. But it also suggests that the vegetable garden and our new flower garden need longer deeper watering to hold water close to the plant roots.

We didn’t do the slope test that Orchid suggested. Fink Estates is slightly flatter than Kansas. But the test itself is rather ingenious. Put two stakes in the ground 100-inches apart. Tie a string to one stake, pull it straight and level and tie it to the second stake. Then measure the distance from the string to the ground on each stake. Subtract one from the other to get the percentage of slope.

Step 3: Research and layout design

Step 3 is to research plants, moving shapes around on the plot plan and coming up with a design. More on that at another time.

The most frequent mistake people make is not understanding how tall and how wide a plant will grow before they start putting plants in the dirt. Most gardeners have no imagination for plant growth. One of the best take home lessons I got from Orchid was that a garden is a constantly transforming creation.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hand-Knit Trellis Now Ready for Climbing Foot-Long Beans

Just as the "June" gloom is starting to burn off, I finished my knitted trellis for the garden. It completely surrounds one of our bamboo tripods, with space at the bottom for tending the romaine lettuces growing within the tripod. It's knit out of nylon twine on US 35 needles. While the nylon has no stretch (the way a wool yarn does), the huge gauge has loads of give. The piece was knit flat with ties attached along one edge.  It is tied to the tripod along one leg. One some early samples for a knitted plant trellis, I experimented with lace patterns.  They look lovely, but I realized two things. One, once the plants grow up the trellis any knitting pattern is lost. Secondly, the plants and leaves need space to grow in and out of. I used a pattern for a shawl: k1, yo, k2tog and then repeat. I got lost a number of times: the yarn-overs drifted over other stitches on occasion. As this was a speed project that won't be visible ones the beans grow over it, I didn

Know Your Soil For Best Garden Results

I've always taken soil for granted. It was there. You put seeds into it. You put water on it. Plants grow and produce flowers, fruit or vegetables. Gayle Weinstein, author of Xeriscape Handbook; A How-To Guide to Natural, Resource-Wise Gardening , takes a different view: “Soil . . . acts as a highway between life and death, land and atmosphere, plants and animals.” It stores water, air and nutrients and makes it possible for an exchange of elements and chemical reactions to occur, she adds. She describes soil as being animal, vegetable and mineral combined. Here are six tests Gayle recommends for getting to know your soil. Grab a shovel and a quart jar. Dig up two cups of dry soil two-to-six inches deep from the areas you want to test. Gather a glass of water, dish washing detergent and paper towels. A soil pH kit, a meter or litmus paper will be needed for the final test.

Bug Hotels: Hospitality for Gardens

The first time I ever saw a bug hotel was in the yard of my nephew's house.  His wife, Kay, is one of the best urban homesteaders I've ever met. Her bug hotel was about the size of a Victorian doll house, had a moss roof and was work of art. I was enchanted. A bug house (or hotel) provides winter habitat for beneficial insects who, in turn, swarm awake in the spring, lay eggs and sweep your organic garden clear of aphids and mites. That's the theory anyway. "I first learned about bug/pollinator houses when taking a hike at a preserve, " Kay said. "They had a huge bug house on display.  It was really like a functional piece of artwork." Although she always wanted to create one, it wasn't until some neighbors started complaining about carpenter bees and discussing sprays to kill them that she decided to get to work. Other neighbors, who were advocates for pollinators and native plants and had made their farm a pollinator haven, served as inspiration. W