While waiting for the flagstone to arrive we moved on to another area the parking lots. The areas has been neglected for some time and needs to be redone. the main island is always being trampled and therefor is a good candidate for hardscape.
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We removed what ever little plantings remained and laid down landscape fabric. Then American Heritage Gravel was put down to give a clean look to the area.
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The plantings along the fence were overgrown with weeds and a lot were dead or missing so the area was cleared out.
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New plantings were added
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Diablo Nine Bark And Miss Kim Korean Lilac were added to the area to give it a full appearance and provide screening from the street. This will enhance the overall appearance as people drive by as well.
There are two more areas that are candidates for the American Heritage Stone one is a transformer box and the other is a parking area along the back of the building. Currently the parking area is a mass of winter creeper and weeds.
Transformer Box
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Parking Area
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These areas should be dealt with this upcoming week. Also all the planting beds should be receiving a heavy layer of mulch. The end results should be a very pleasing landscape that will be easy to maintain.
It is not always as easy to plan a landscape project at the urban garden. There are many things to consider when we undertake one. First off there are only two full time groundskeepers so there is the labor issue. The next thing is timing and finally the material handling.
Of all the things that are needed the material handling is the most complex. In particular nursery stock. In order to get a good price the whole order must be placed and delivered at once. This is were the problem comes in the stock needs to be kept well watered and healthy till planting time. This is a time consuming task the maybe as much as an hour and a half to two hours a day just to get everything watered.
Photos Of The Material For Our Most Recent Landscape Project
Here We See The Knockout Roses And Some Of The Shrubs
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Diablo Nine Bark In Containers
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Yarrow, Lambia,and Coreopsis Ready For Planting.
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Can’t Forget The Cat Mint
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So as you can see there is a lot to water. More important this is all in addition to having to do our daily maintenance schedule and any special things that come up as well. To do a project of this size does require some planning and if it were not for the fact that we have 3 seasonal workers this year I would probably would have had to contract it out.
It is nice every now and then to be able to do a project like this .Yes it is hectic and stressful but in the end there is a great deal of satisfaction knowing that you have been able to accomplish something and that the fruits of your labor are seen by hundreds and hundreds of people every week.
This is the second phase of the landscape overhaul at one of the outlying facilities. The previous article describes what we started with and the outline of the new landscape plan. You can read it here Landscape Renovation At Outlying Facility
The first step was to cleanup the existing beds and decide what to keep it was not to hard as there was little to work with. The Knock Out Roses and a Viburnum where the only thing worth saving so we cleared everything and prepared the area for planting.
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After everything was removed we were ready to start. We loosened and amended the soil and then placed granite cobbles to outline the beds. This area gets massive amounts of traffic and unfortunately a lot of people think nothing of walking right through the flower beds. To help eliminate this a short cut was planned for them as well.
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A small flagstone footpath will be placed between the two beds to help control pedestrian damage. I do not truly believe this will eliminate the damage but I do believe it will help to relieve some of it. People are creatures of habit and it is hard to change them.
Next the two front beds were planted
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Additional knock out roses were added to fill in the bed. On the other side Gold Flame Spirea and Nepta ( Var Walkers Low Cat Mint) were added to fill in the front. Lambia was added along the future path side to fill that in.
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This will look really nice as it fills in and the plants mature. The next step for this area will be the flagstone path and back bed plantings but that will have to wait for additional materials to arrive.
