The Fence Project 1st for 2011

Spring has sprung and at my house that means it is project time.  All of my gardening endeavors move from a figment of my imagination, to a “to do” list, then to a shopping list and are followed up with a trip to my chiropractor.  This year is really no exception.  We have already dethatched and aerated the lawn, spread lime to help neutralize our acidic soil, put down some weed and feed and will follow up with grass seed in another week.  So the lawn should look pretty good in a few more weeks.   However, the flower beds, edges and other outdoor areas need a lot of work.

My first project, which is going to take a lot more time than I originally anticipated, was born out of a need to keep my dog in the yard.  Bonnie is an adventurer and she loves to travel about seeing exactly what type of mischief she can get into.  We trained her to an electric collar and fence, but she is quite intelligent and has figured out how to circumvent the correction her collar would offer any normal dog.  So we had two ideas, we could run chicken wire all around the fence, like it is on the wooded side of the yard or we could
put an extra board at the bottom and see if we could stop her from going under in that way.

Option 2 won by a landslide, because everywhere we have the chicken wire the weeds and grass are embedded in the fence making it impossible to keep it neat looking.  In addition to keeping the dog in the yard and avoiding the weed laden fence, I was trying to find a long-term fix to improving the appearance of the

area next to our driveway in a manner that didn't involve mowing, weed whacking or other ongoing labor intensive methods.  What we came up with is going to be a challenge to get done to begin with and for the first year or two will require some upkeep and maintenance, but after that should become a relatively carefree
and beautiful landscape edging project.

So what did we do?  We bought some boards and stained them to match the existing fence color.  While I was at it I repaired the fence where the tree branches had damaged it this winter.  Then we attached the boards to the bottom of the fence posts at ground level.  In some places we had to dig out a little in order to get the boards to reach the ground on both sides.  Then after we had each of the boards attached we started cleaning out the weeds, grass, and rocks etc. that were in the soil.  In the low spots we added additional topsoil in the high spots we took some soil out and used it to fill holes or other low areas in the yard.  Then we worked the soil to a level about 6 inches deep.
In another area of my yard I had built a low wall with flat rocks to border some installed equipment and keep it from being such an eyesore.  Unfortunately my children can’t seem to stop knocking over the stone wall with the riding lawn mower, so I have decided that I am just not going to fight that battle anymore and I have a new plan for that area.  That will be the next project that we talk about.
Anyhow, I collected a selection of the large flat rocks and placed them in the beds, then added a variety of ground covers.  My initial plan was to do the entire edge with Liriope Muscari, but the sheer amount of that and the cost involved changed my mind.  I have many different ground covers planted around here already and I just started taking starts from each of them to fill in.  I really liked what I saw.  It will be a while before I have a completely finished project, but I can see that it is going to be very nice.  If you like it – press the like button and say so.

Yes I will have a few years of weeding, but after those ground covers take hold the only thing we will have to do is take off starts to keep it from growing over onto the driveway.  I will make certain that I put another picture in here when the project is complete and will do some follow ups over the next few years so we can enjoy this together.