Garden aerial and plans

My garden, like yours, is ever changing.  Here is a screenshot of Google Maps for my house.  This was taken sometime last fall.

 

When I moved into the house in 2008, there was minimal landscaping around the edge of the house and deck.  The shed was there, as well as the rocked in corner behind the shed.  That was it.  It was pretty plain.

What the Google maps picture doesn’t show you is how the yard slopes downhill to the northeast.  It’s a pain to mow.  I wanted to make that slope go away so I have slowly been adding gardens along the fence.  The plan is to have them creep up and in towards the middle of the yard.

I planted lilacs in the northeast corner in 2009.  In the picture above they are surrounded by framed out chicken wire to protect them from the bunnies.  Die bunnies DIE!  er excuse me… In 2010 I added half of the back fence bed.  I only had enough grass and leaves to do that much.  I hadn’t yet graduated to sneaking the neighbors yard waste bags into the trunk of my car in the dead of night.  I finished the other half of the back fence bed in 2011 and that brings us to the picture above.

This year we are adding a new bed along the north fence.  Want to see?

I was leaning out the bedroom window with my arms stretched up above my head so I could clear the pergola. Forgive the blurriness.

There is the brand new bed!  Well, the beginning of it anyway.  I have been layering grass clippings and compost.  The junk boards are just an outline, when it gets a little cooler we will outline the bed with brick.  Then it will match the rest of the yard.  This is a fairly slim bed compared the the back fence, but I will expand it over the years.  Right now I am thinking this will be a “tomato alley” of sorts for next summer.
Here is what I want the yard to look like.  Eventually.  Some day.  It’s a slow process, I’ll give you that.

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