This spring we began installing a pond in an area of the Bird Village that has always been problematic. I worked on it in the cool mornings of summer & it’s finally complete.

DIGGING

The basic shape was dug out by Farmer John using a backhoe. It made a mess of my bird village rather quickly.

MAIN POND

Top Left: I carved the finished design using a regular ol’ shovel. The main pool has ledges all the way around to hold the large rocks.
Top Right: We had a dump truck load of rock delivered. It probably ended up being twice as many rocks as we needed for the pond. But, I’m ok with that. I’m always wanting rocks for various projects. Now, I have them.
Middle: I slowly brought rocks over to edge the pond. I just stacked them in so they fit nicely and didn’t wobble.
Bottom Left: I used a combination of large flattish rocks & pebbles for the bottom of the main pond.

RUN OFF COLLECTION POOL

All the rain water from our gutters drain right about where the left back edge of the main pond begins. In the beginning days of the bird village, we tried turning the area into a bog garden. We didn’t do it correctly & so it wasn’t very boggy most of the year. What we did learn from that experience, though, is that excess water drains right out over the path, making a mess of it. So, we built a drainage area for this pond and then added a smaller pool to collect the water. The drainage area does go right through our walking path, though. Eventually, Farmer John is going to build a cutesy little bridge to go over that area.

Top: Somehow, the pond area was bigger than I was envisioning and I spent a small fortune buying a good pond liner. It’s always recommended to put down an underlayment between the ground and the liner. I didn’t. I don’t have a good reason, I just didn’t. We don’t have rocks in our clay dirt, so I’m not too worried about one coming up from the ground poking a hole in the liner. Also, I was just being cheap & lazy.
Middle Left: Laying out the liner.
Middle Right: I worked on the pond as often as I could, but I knew it was going to take awhile to complete. So after laying out the liner, I scooped dirt on top of it. I was hoping the dirt would protect the liner from the sun & also from wondering critters & children. It seems to have worked. Right before adding pebbles to the bottom of the pool, I threw out some of the dirt. I didn’t bother getting it all out. I’m going for a naturalistic pond. Pond’s have dirt.
Bottom: The smaller pool got pebbles to cover the bottom.

DRAINAGE

Last year, I made cement leaves. They’ve been laying around since then as I’ve been searching for a good spot for them. I ended up laying them across the drainage area connecting the main pond to the smaller pool. I don’t know if this will be there permanent home. But, it works for now.

2014

2015

DUCKS

Our ducks have, of course, found the pond & love swimming in it.

CRITTERS

You may or may not have noticed that this pond does not have a pump or filter. Nope it doesn’t. It would be nice to set that up one day. But for now, we don’t have electricity in the Bird Village. No electricity means no pump or filter.

I’m not too concerned, though. Our other pond that we put in years ago has never had a pump or filter and does just fine. That pond had the same problem. No electricity. There is now electricity near that pond, but we still haven’t hooked up the pump or filter… However, now I think its because Farmer John repurposed those items for the aquaponics system. Ah well, one day.

Water features have to be my all time favorite addition to garden areas.

Check out our other Flower Garden Areas:
Back Yard
Bird Village
Front Yard & Pond
Shade Garden

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One of our flowerbeds is not like the others, for two reasons.

Reason #1: Because we don’t have large trees or buildings surrounding our house we don’t have much shade. Most of the year we have plenty of cloud cover & rain, but in the summer it is dry and hot. So all of my flowerbeds, except this one, are full of sun loving plants. The summer sun tends to scorch the leaves of plants that can’t handle it.

Reason #2: This is also our only flowerbed that has a defined backdrop, which is our house. None of our other flowerbeds are along a fence or building. Because of that, I’ve struggled a bit with getting those flowerbeds to look pleasing to the eye in the landscape as a whole.

It’s nothing fancy, but I do like the way this little shade garden has turned out.

2008

A blank, muddy slate to start with.

2009

I installed a brick edge to separate the flower bed from the lawn and planted small shrubs.

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

Check out our other Flower Garden Areas:
Back Yard
Bird Village & Pond
Front Yard & Pond

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When we began the process of installing flowerbeds I wanted a pond, but wouldn’t allow myself to even think about it because we needed many other things first & I knew I could easily get carried away with any pond ideas. Well, lucky for me, our neighbor ended up selling us his pond set up, including his goldfish, for super cheap. The size of the pond liner determined the size of my new pond, preventing me from getting out of hand. We had the perfect place for the pond. It’s on a little hill allowing us to have a little waterfall, too. The reality is that the waterfall area at the moment is just for looks. There is no electricity at the pond which means there is no running pump, which means there is no water movement. I love ponds in gardens & I’m happy to have this one. It’s in a great location so I can look at it often throughout the day to see which critters are visiting. Like all my gardens, it’s a work in progress. So far, I’m liking the progress of the pond.

2009 & 2010

Top Left: The majority of the hole was dug out by the backhoe.
Top Right: Then I used a good ol’ fashioned shovel to give it the shape I wanted and add a few ledges.
Bottom: After perfecting the shape we layed in the liner. Then, added rocks.

WATERFALL

Top Left: The water wheel came from our neighbors as part of buying the pond from them.
Top Middle: A large, heavy piece of granite that needed a purpose. After giving the water wheel a fresh coat of paint, we set it on the granite.
Bottom Left: We bought a few pieces of slate for the waterfall.
Right: Waterfall all set up… However, the silly thing is for years we didn’t have electricity at the pond, so the wheel never turned and water never ran over the rocks. Now we do have electricity at the pond. But, the pump is being used in our aquaponics system. And we have to figure out a filter that can handle large amounts of duck poop otherwise we would just have duck poop water flowing over the rocks. Ummm, yuck. So, the waterfall and wheel are just for looks. One year I’m confident we’ll have it running, though.

2011

I love the way the pond turned out.

Flowers & Fish

Wild Critters

I love the pond for many reasons. One of them is seeing the wildlife that stops by.

Ducks

Not long after the pond went in we got ducks. I enjoy watching the ducks swim and play, but they aren’t doing the pond, the plants or the fish any favors.

2013

I’m still working on getting the plants to cooperate around the pond and water quality due to the ducks, but overall I’m happy with how it has turned out.

Check out our other Flower Garden Areas:
Back Yard
Bird Village & Pond
Front Yard
Shade Garden

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The front yard is a mix of a few flowerbeds. The focal point originally was the wishing well. Now there’s so much going on, I’m not sure what the focal point is.

I love the wishing well, but am having trouble loving this flowerbed as a whole. I can’t seem to get the layering right & my stepping stones leading to the wishing well in the summer are covered by perennials. Maybe I should add a few larger evergreens near the back edge. I also wonder what the flowering cherry tree will do to the look of the flowerbed as it matures.

2008

In 2008, our house was complete and it was time to focus on the landscaping. We had a blank canvas to work with.

2009

Top Left: The beginnings: A tree, a rhodie and a couple other plants scattered about.
Top Right: I began putting in a little path. Trying to save money, we had a load of sawdust delivered to use as our first year’s mulch. It seemed to work alright, but it very quickly gets mixed in with the dirt. In most places a year later you couldn’t even tell we put down the mulch.

2010

Bottom: This spring a pond and cement wall went in.

2011

Top Left: The previous spring, I installed a small, 3 layer concrete wall to the front of the wishing well flower bed. That’s just what it needed; a nice polished front. By doing that, I extended the flowerbed out a little further than I originally planned, which worked out fine.

2012

Top: After living in the house for 4 years, we finally got a front porch & flowerbed to go with it.

2013

2014

Check out our other Flower Garden Areas:
Back Yard
Bird Village & Pond
Front Yard Pond
Shade Garden

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The bird village is my favorite garden. It started with a bird bath & a Magnolia tree both in memory of my mother-in-law. She was supposed to live here with us, but passed away before she moved here. Some how that inspiration turned into my bird village.

2009

Top Left: It all started with Farmer John tilling the ground for me.
Top Right: I layed out the shape of the path & installed bender board (which I ended up disliking.) John found some down logs, put them in the ground & mounted various bird feeders & houses on them.
Bottom: Many plants were added, gravel filled in the main path, I also made a short path that will some day lead to a bench. And, a layer of mulch had been spread.

2010

Bottom Left: Right in the middle of the Bird Village is where all the water runs from the gutters on our house. So, at that drainage spot there has to be a layer of rock. My solution to this problem was to make a little bog garden at the bottom of where the water drains. So, we buried a tarp underneath the dirt to help hold in the water. There’s a couple problems with this. One, is that the layer of dirt on top isn’t very deep, so I can’t plant large plants. The other dilemma is that although it does hold water, it has to rain a LOT for it to really be boggy. I should have done a better job researching bog gardens.

2011

Left: This section in spring is one of my favorites. I love the lupine & weigela .

2012

Top: In the spring of 2012 I gave the Bird Village a little update. I planted many heather & juniper plants hoping to add a little winter interest. I also spread a good layer of bark dust.
Bottom Left: I tried to remedy the horribly weedy, non-boggy bog garden by filling it in with lots of rock. I was going for a dry creekbed type look. It looked good for the first couple months.
Bottom Right: Summer perennials gone crazy, as usual in this area.

2013

The Bird Village gets way too overgrown in the summer.

2014

Top Left: Out with the bog garden turned dry creek bed and in with a new pond.
Bottom Left: The Sweet William is looking good, but kind of hidden in the grass and day lilies.

After all these years, the Bird Village is still my favorite of our flower gardens. I have probably put the most work into it & it’s getting closer to the way I envisioned it.

Check out our other Flower Garden Areas:
Back Yard
Bird Village
Front Yard & Pond
Shade Garden

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The flowerbed in the back yard was the first garden area we added. Sections of it I really like & some areas still need a lot of work. It is a fairly large area & I have a difficult time keeping the weeds under control.

2008

Left: Farmer John started out by tilling & leveling the ground.
Right: Next, we layed out the shape of the lawn & sprinkled grass seed.

2009

Left: We didn’t have a lot of money to spend on landscaping, so we opted for purchasing smaller plants hoping eventually they would fill in the space.
Right: The grass seed worked out pretty well & that first season we had a pretty, green lawn. Yay!

2010

Unfortunately, by the next year the lawn had been taken over by weeds, mostly dandelions. Damn! But, my itty bitty plants are growing well.

2011

Three years after planting all the perennials & shrubs they are filling in the area quite nicely. However, we still have a dandelion problem in the grass.

2012

By now, the Back Yard flower bed is established & I just spend time maintaining it.

2013

Left: The Snowmound Spirea is definitely one of my favorite plants in the back yard. It gives a welcome pop of color in the spring after a usually dreary winter.

2014

Daisies, Day Lilies & Dandelions could be another title for this flower bed since after all these years they have become the majority.

The back yard still needs some tweaking and a lot of constant maintenance, but year by year it’s improving.

Check out our other Flower Garden Areas:
Bird Village & Pond
Front Yard & Pond
Shade Garden

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