Backyard Project - Planting in the Gravel Bed Garden

Gravel Bed garden

The plants I planted a couple of months ago are thriving, confirming my design criteria for this bed will work.

All plants must be culinary and/or medicinal, able to thrive in full sun, suited to well-drained soil,  need only low levels of water, and have blue to purple flowers with the odd one having yellow flowers.

Confident my design will work I have visited several nearby nurseries to find plants that fit the spec.

Here I am making a path through the bed using low growing plants that can take light foot traffic. I have found many different types of thyme to begin the path.

The rosemary and sage I transplanted from other old beds are thriving. I will be able to take cuttings from the rosemary once the rains begin again.  I will propagate these cuttings for another project I have in mind.

I have marked the spots for the path plants with empty pots weighted down with stones. 

The thyme path meanders through the bed like a river. 

I have read lots of books and checked many websites to make a long list of suitable plants. I keep this list in my bag ready for when I am in the vicinity of a nursery. It is a list of plants for the spots either side of the path and between the stone wall.

I have found out I love reading about a plant, visualising how it would look in a particular spot, and checking on how well it would relate to the other plants around it. 

When I look at this Gravel Bed garden I see it full of mature plants and looking beautiful. I imagine walking slowly along the meandering paths smelling and tasting leaves and harvesting a few springs for the dish I am preparing in the kitchen. There is a spot for a bench which will slow me down even more. It is what I need.

Backyard Project: Garden Rooms

Gravel Bed Garden Room

This garden room came about because of the site conditions. Grass would not grow in this area of the back lawn. We found the reason why after the thin layer of topsoil was scraped away before the studio construction began. Bedrock was exposed. Thin soil exposed to 12 hours of sunshine and reflected heat from the house suited a hot dry garden bed.

Tom dug down around the bedrock to make a sunken 'U' shaped garden room. The 2 entrances to this room are accessed by flat rock steps.  

It has rock walls and grey/white washed gravel flooring. I laid out a length of yellow yarn to mark the path through the room.

I have started planting. I have gone around to other beds to find plants that would be happier in a place with full sun and free draining to dry soils - rosemary, thyme, sage, lavender.

Marking out the beginnings of another garden room.

The walls will be a hedge of pineapple guava (feijoa), fig trees and Callistemon (bottlebrush).

Another room is called Walter's Gorge. It is now bisected by the deer fence but still reads as a room because of the plantings - Japanese water irises, horsetail and a number of different ferns, as a start. The blackberry we cleared from this area a couple of years ago still tries to inhabit the gorge but doesn't take long to cut back now.

I am starting to develop the garden room next to the studio porch. The pink tulips, hyacinths, and alliums will be transferred to the Water Drop bed once they finish blooming and die back. To the left will be a hydrangea hedge. Cuttings have been planted and the whole bed mulched with straw. 

The floor of this room will be a meadow of native ground covers that can be walked on but doesn't need mowing. The soil is being built up before their planting.

Valerie Easton's book 'A Pattern Garden The Essential Elements of Garden Making' has been most helpful while designing these garden rooms. Her design philosophy is based on the Japanese concept wabi-sabi and the Pattern Language work of Christopher Alexander. She designs garden rooms using 14 of Christopher Alexander's patterns.

Morocco - A Country's Food Is Always Interesting

Squash Stall, Middle Atlas Mountains

Carb Shop - pasta, beans, flours

Herb and Spice Shop

Date Shop

There are 24 different types of dates in Morocco.

Olive Shop

Eaten as an appie at lunch and dinner and as a snack anytime.

Olive Shop

Olives pickled in different vinegars, soaked in water to make olive water for cooking.

Vegetable Shop

Fresh winter vegetables come into the medinas every morning from the fertile interior farmlands.

Snail Shop

Escapees look down on the captives.

Cooked Snail Stall

Menu - In the Shell or Snail Soup

Camel Meat Shop

+ Sebastian - he heard a lot of comments as he walked the streets. Finally he asked our guide, Tahar, what people were saying. Tahar laughed because they were calling Sebastian 'Ali Babar'. Ali  Babar had a red beard.

Spicy Olive Shop

Nougat Shop

Onion Delivery 

Fish Market, Essaouira

Freshly Squeezed Juice Shop

As we wandered through the different towns it was so refreshing not to see North American based, international fast food shops and their loud, in-your-face signage. 

We got the impression Moroccans still eat a lot of food prepared from scratch using fresh, locally grown vegetables, free-range raised animals for meat and dairy and many different native herbs and spices for their nutritional and medicinal effects.

There are restaurants, street stalls and hand-carts selling traditional fare and new restaurants featuring nouvelle cuisine still using local, fresh ingredients. 

A foody's paradise.

Spring Flowers on the Coast

This is my view outside my studio this month. Last fall I pulled some boring bushy type plants out of the bed and buried over 200 bulbs.

Each morning I go to my studio I see more colour. The hyacinths are the first to show.

I thought I had done my research and planted only those the deer don't like to eat. But it has been such a long cold winter I think the deer have forgotten they don't like irises.

The spring rains are keeping the bulbs growing and the new plants in the herb garden are settling in well. I don't have much time to enjoy the new spring growth yet because I am focused on finishing up a module of work for my BA(Hons) studies. The package is due in the UK next week. There is still so much I could do but come the deadline it all goes in a box.

Kitchen Herb Garden

It felt as though spring sprung today, so the beginnings of the new herb garden went in.
Italian parsley - I picked a few stems from each plant and put them in my salad for lunch and ate outside for the first time this year.

Thyme

Chives - I should start using this too to encourage its growth.

French Sorrel - yumm
I gave them all a water late this afternoon. Hope they aren't feeling too shocked after their traumatic day.
And I hope the deer don't find them.