Here is a preview of an upcoming series of posts documenting the first year of working in our garden. Pictured above, is the back yard before and after. You can see we were able to start with a fairly blank slate. Several native cherry trees, a meadow-like lawn space, a motley fence and a spruce tree in the far back. Not bad as it is! But what you can’t see is that there was also a cocktail of every weed in the Pacific Northwest- Himalayan blackberry, buttercup, morning glory, horsetail- luckily no knotweed! The photo was taken after everything was weed-wacked, so that’s why it doesn’t look so menacing. Below, is our front yard:
(As you can see, the truck changes color with the seasons.) Our front yard was already structured with a low block wall, central path, Asian pear, Wolfeyes dogwood, Italian Plum, and some lawn area. Of course it also had the classic white picket fence, which we’re going to keep until it starts falling apart. Luckily, invasive weeds other than dandelion, were not present in the front yard since the previous owners had been using it as a vegetable garden. So our main task at the beginning was to weed, amend the soil, and plant! You can see in the subsequent photos what our yard became over the past year and a half, and in the following posts I will describe what we did, and what we learned. So stay tuned!