That's IT! The Winged Garden is having a face lift

I'll bet you thought I was kidding when I said I was "busy making terrible landscaping mistakes", well, dang me, dang me, it's all true.

One of my biggest mistakes, and one I shall never repeat, let me assure you! was mulching for the Winter with straw. bright, fresh, bedding straw. Which, as the Spring came creeping along, germinated into lush, rooty, tall and pugnacious grasses. They have completely over run all my perennials. Plus, they have harboured the shrews and vholes, the bane of my Winged Garden's existance. Those evil rodentia ate the roots off all of my phormiums, and my EverGold Sedge. I don't even know what else they got their grubby little mitts on!

So this Winter, as the weather permits, I am going to pull, yank, cut and pummel the grasses into submission. Once they are properly submissive, I plan to use the newspapers that I have been collecting for 2 years, and lay them down to smother what's left. I shall cut out holes and spaces for the remaining perennials who are still fighting the good fight.. Such as a wonderful Geranium sanguineum 'Elke'.(or cranesbill) that I propogated at Clackamas Community College with jenny Ward 9the greatest propogation teacher in the whole wide world!); 2 beautiful Firepower Nandinas ; a Common Upright Rosemary Officianalis which is not listening to the naysayers about its' tenderness in my Zone; the Buddleias - a Royal Red , a couple of Black Knights ; and a couple of the standard Common lavender with the orange centers .. And most of the Lavenders made it. The Scarlet Monardo made it, as well as the Salvia Officianalis 'Purpurascens'. Mine's a much darker purple, tho, and it always sings as I pass by it. (You know the tune! and lookie what I found!) I think the golden sage made it as well. The Lucifer Crocosmia made it, but I do not know whether the Emily McKenzie made it, (I have another pot of that in the greenhouse, tho.. Yay!) and I don't know if the Solfaterre made it... I shall have to find another, and protect it from the ravages of the root scourges. I LOVE the foliage of this crocosmia!

Everything else is either smothered, yet to be re-discovered, or sacrificed to the dining pleasure of the shrews and vholes. Whom, as you remember, I loathe.

So, I think I shall do my best to remove all the grasses, lay down newspaper mulch, cover that with a thick layer of bark mulch, clean around the surrounding plants, and mulch heavily with the back chips.

Then I shall drag my ceramic bathtub up from the blackberry prison that it has been trapped in, and fill it with soil. I shall plant my phormiums and some trailing plants in the bathtub, something which will hide the back of the tub. Then I'm going to collect all my wine barrels, and cedar boxes, and place them around inside the Winged Garden, and plant them up with the plants which the vholes and shrews showed such interest in. I'm going to pull out a big stump, and put my solar-powered fountain on top of it, and my two sun chasers around.

A new look! A new plan! Perhaps a little ambitious, but I'll bet it'll look pretty cool! Well, this is exactly what Winter is for. To plan how to correct terrible landscaping mistakes!

>^,,^<