Easy Natural Garden

Photos don't do the garden justice now. It really has more depth and layers. The native plants visible here: Elderberry (Sambucus--white flower clusters on shrub in foreground), Sundrops (Oenothera--yellow flowers in middle ground), Gaillardia (orange/red flowers), and Redbud (Cercis--purple-leafed tree).

This image does not do justice to the carpets of Voila tricolor that have self-seeded in my garden! They begin blooming almost as soon as they germinate and continue to grow larger and produce more and more blooms for months. The taller flower is native Woodland Phlox which will go dormant when the summer heat moves in.

Due to the heat last summer combined with an illness, I did not manage to finish planting or keep up with the weeds, so this year will be more work than usual. I need to get out all the newly seeded weeds and replace them with desirable plants.

Due to work and family pressures, I am not trying to have a vegetable garden this year. I'll concentrate on getting my natural gardens into a self-sustaining state.

Here is a portion of my main garden a year later. I was ill most of the fall and winter, so much less has been accomplished than planned, but the plants themselves helped out! The winter savory loved the wood chips and seeded in, as did hundreds of viola tricolor (Johnny-Jump-Up), and even some lavender! The is also a huge mass of Queen-Ann's-Lace crowding out the weeds in one unplanted area, and as long as I cut it down before it seeds again, it is a lovely filler plant. The photo shows one end of the lavender "Hidcote" edging. I grew these from seed and the range of shades in the blooms is surprising. They range from very pale to very dark, and in one spot I must have planted two seedling together and they happen to be the lightest and darkest--very pretty with the almost white and rich purple buds all mixed together. The lavender will, with judicious pruning, grow into a more even and solid strip along the walk. The plants are just a year old.

Here I have several varieties of Coreopsis plus Gaillardia, Sedum, Echinacea, Achillea, Dianthus, Yucca, Violas, Lavender, Oenothera, Asiatic Lilies, Nepeta and more...

Any garden requires some work, of course. This Spring the flower bed in this photo needed 15 minutes of my time per day for about 8 days to remove weed seedlings. 15 minutes is easy! Each day I just picked a spot and plucked it clean of weeds. I still stop and pull a weed now and then, but the desirable plants are close enough together to crowd out most later-germinating weeds.

This garden requires no watering of established plants, even during drought conditions.

Photograph ©2009 by Jane Walker

Here one can see how I have laid out salvaged pavers to make a "stepping stone" path. A labyrinth is a path with one beginning and one end. Mine is not a traditional design, instead it represents a flower when viewed from above. This is a work in progress. The weather has been either very wet or very hot or both, so I haven't been able to do much work on the path recently. The pavers need to be set into the mulch, not left on top.

Photograph ©2009 by Jane Walker

Goldfinches feast on many of the plants in my garden. At the moment they are flocking to the Nepeta and Coreopsis. They also like the Asiatic Lilies.

Before I started the gardens, I never saw goldfinchs. Now there are so many that they fly up in bright clouds when I come out of the house!

I created the image at right from a photo I took though a window of a goldfinch in the garden.
Below is a female goldfinch right outside the dining room window.


My goldfinch images are for sale as art prints, cards, and more:

Art by Jane Walker--my shop at Zazzle

Images ©2009 by Jane Walker

Yeah, rabbits. My vegetable garden is enclosed with rabbit fencing--some of them are merely slowed down by it. I'm working on that!

Our neighborhood had a rabbit population explosion last year for some unknown reason, and, of course, that means even more this year. My yard is overrun and my dog hasn't caught any, yet--they are the one animal that does not trigger her prey-drive!

I have had numerous opportunities to observe them, and they actually do less damage than I had expected. Their preferred plants are dandelions and clover. I have plenty to spare!


This baby was in the compost bin!

 I know that many people would love to have a garden without bugs! Insects are a vital part of a balanced environment, though, so any pesticide use can be devastating. I do occasionally use very specific products when balance cannot be maintained naturally--in the case of slugs, for instance. I cannot keep chickens or ducks to eat them, and wild fowl rarely enter my property (I did have a pair of wild ducks try to nest in my garden a few times several years ago, but they abandoned every nest). In most instances, leaving insect pests alone will attract insects and birds that eat them.

If a pest appears likely to kill a plant before the predators arrive, I always start by just knocking them off or killing them by hand. Aphids are easy to knock off plants with a spray of water, but I always look to make sure something is not already hunting them. Ladybug nymphs are especially important. They are ugly monsters, but they eat more aphids than adult ladybugs and should not be disturbed.

PRAYING MANTIS:
Photographing mantis nymphs isn't easy--they tend to dart around! There were two on my fence and I had to keep going back and forth through the gate as they slipped around the pickets trying to stay out of my sight. The body on this one was about 5/8" long.


Adult mantids are much easier to photograph--they don't feel threatened by much. This one was 4 or 5 inches long. It may be the same one in the above photo all grown up!


Photographs ©2009 by Jane Walker

Here are photos of Monarch caterpillars and a Monarch butterfly that lived in my garden:




photos ©2009 by Jane Walker

This mainly requires patience! It takes nearly a year for the ground to be ready to plant, but in the meantime it looks tidy with the wood chips.

I covered the grass with a thick layer of newspaper and covered that with about 3 inches of wood chips. The newspapers were saved up from the free ones that are tossed on my front walk each week, and the wood chips were free from a tree service. Many tree services have to pay to dump chips at a landfill and they would much rather dump them in the driveway of someone who will put them to good use!

In about 9 months, I can start planting. I just push the chips aside and dig a hole. The grass and newspaper has usually completely decayed into compost.



Photograph ©2009 by Jane Walker