Landscape beginnings

Last week we got the kitchen garden nearly finished. We decided to keep the front wall down to 2’ and add latticework on top to hide the meter, rain barrel, and composter. Back in Grand Rapids we had a compost heap where food waste occasionally "volunteered" by sprouting into new life, including my favorite, a pineapple. But here in Lake Elmo, we will have a veritable composting apparatus. We still need to choose a composter and a rain barrel(s). We're glad we decided on the shorter front wall: now that the house is starting to take shape, some things that seemed like good ideas on paper turn out to be giant 4' walls in real life. Nope, much better without a 4' wall!

In the kitchen garden we now have planting soil that has been added to the beds. There is crushed rock in the pathways and while I would have preferred bark mulch, rock serves as a base for pavers.

Also last week, Jim convinced me today that we should use a premade drain for the driveway. It will be cheaper and can handle the water just as well. I hope he’s right. It is made of fiberglass, and I’m not sure what else, but apparently not vinyl. It will have a smaller grate, easy to remove and clean, and to roll over, much less expensive.

Most importantly, we met with our landscape architect, Laurie, on Wednesday, to discuss landscaping. The first priority was a plan to stabilize the soil until we can decide exactly what we want to plant where. We made a good start on a landscape plan.

This week the landscapers graded the back, put down 6 inches of topsoil, seeded it with a no-mow fescue, and covered it all with straw mats. After they graded, they went over it with a “fork”, loosened the soil, and removed big rocks. They said they graded it so it is banked away from the well pipe for my sled run safety, but I wasn’t satisfied that they’d banked it enough. I did some quick raking, but fear I didn’t accomplish as much as I wished. The fescue will only be mowed in a small area, up by the patio, and a path to the beach. Eventually, when I have time to work on a site plan and go through some catalogs, we’ll define an area in the back where we can plant some prairie flowers, and then some trees. Laurie has suggested the area be restored to oak savannah, but I’d like some sort of meadow/flower area in part of the back.