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A
must have if
hiring a contractor!
 
 
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Pre Spring Garden Planning
Copyright © 2005 Tammy Clayton
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The end of February already? My how time does fly! The sun has already
become more readily available than in the past few months. Perhaps more
cold and clear, but those candle-hours are important to the sleeping
natural world; it is their built in clock. You cannot lie to a plant, it
knows what time it is. Far more intelligent than one gives them credit
for.
As you plan what to add to your garden this winter, I am sure you are
paying attention to the light and water requirements all good perennial
vendors attach to each entry in their catalog. |
This is very important to your success with each plant. But it is possible to mix more drought
loving plants with those that require more moisture in the same planting
with good results. The secret lies in the substructure of each given
plant's area in the bed. Drought lovers do like some water, they will reward you with a much more
beauty with some weekly water...in a drought bed. But what if you want to
put say - lavender and phlox in with lobelia and ligularia? Those water
requirements can really hamper one's creativity! So some knowledge of drainage
engineering will give you the ability to try mixing them in the same planting
area. Lavender and Phlox like drier conditions.
Not that the Phlox will die in a
spot where daily overhead watering is received. It will survive and grow huge,
and flower excessively, but be stricken with fungus that makes the lower leaves
yellow, icky looking and then become half defoliated. Ground watering is it's
preferred daily moisturizing treatment.
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One can place it in a corner the sprinkler doesn't hit and
water that section by hand once or twice a week and it will reward you
very nicely indeed. Since Phlox is rather tall, this avenue of placing it
in the back corner works out well. It likes the moisture but not on its
leaves. Roses fare better this way as well, especially since one cannot
control what the heavens will pour down. Less black spot and such other
marring problems will occur, if ground water is used vs. overhead. |
Lavender on the other hand loves it hot and dry. It doesn't mind what
heaven pours down IF there is a good drainage structure where the roots
are. Too much water retention and it will slowly die. To counteract good
soil water retention where one would like to plant the ever so beloved
lavender row, a blind drain is required. It is called "blind" because on
the surface you do not know that it is different from the rest of the
area. In a planting area that is scratched once or twice a month some of
the substructure will mix into the top surface and change the color of the
topping soil. But once the bed fills no one will see this. (Surface
scratching, by the way will put much needed air tunnels to roots, create
more water availability to roots, and lessen the amount of weeding one
must do, if it is done twice a month.)
 The smaller the particle size of soil, the moisture it will retain. Clay
having the most minute pieces and sand having the largest. Each person's
garden area will have a totally different soil structure. If you are in
hard clay, I would advise that either you excavate 6" of clay and fill
with 7 inches of peat/topsoil 50-50 fill OR raise the bed at least 6
inches above the harsh environment of the clay. Raising it is much less
labor than excavating! Not too many things will do nicely in clay. The
only way around it is correction. Once you have nice workable soil, with
good moisture retention, yet good drainage - you can go about planning
what goes where and how to amend each area for certain plants.
To get good drainage, you need to go down at least 4-6 inches, depending
on the plants requirements. SHARP drainage is engineered with pea gravel
in a 2" layer, followed by 2" of coarse sand, topped off with 2" of your
rich garden soil. In times of extreme moisture the worst of it will lay in
the gravel bed. The gravel there also holds more heat than the moisture
retaining soil, therefore using the warmth to do away with excess water
faster. Variegated irises planted with a bed of road gravel 4" beneath the
surface will grow three times more lushly than those in average garden
soil - they love that heat! Heat and drought loving plants are much
happier in that environment when regular water is received. It is the
retention that causes decline and not what comes from above. More moderate
drainage would be created using 3" of sand and 3" of soil on top. Since
each plant has different needs, your engineering of drainage will require
a bit of working on. But it opens doors to what you can put in a planting
as happy bedfellows that no drainage field would never allow you to
attempt.
Plants such as Ligularia need loads of moisture. To truly enjoy these
types of plants you must keep the soil moist at all times. So to plant
these in a happy spot, average garden soil (50/50 peat-topsoil mix) must
have good composted humus worked in and laid on top as a mulch. This holds
water and coolness where it is needed for the roots to stay wet enough.
Another neat trick I have seen that might aid in keeping these hungry
types lush would be a water reservoir or two at their bases. Using an
inverted 20 oz. pop bottle with the cap on and bottom cut off. Then 3/4 of
the way up the bottle poke a small hole every inch. The water in the
reservoir only leaks out when the water in the soil is depleted. So it
slowly oozes moisture where it is needed. Refilling it would depend on the
heat index and the amount of rainfall or irrigation in a given spot. To
keep the soil from filling the bottle, a piece of landscape fabric, a hunk
of old polyester fabric, or even the foot of an old nylon stocking, rubber
banded in place allows moisture in while keeping most of the dirt from
washing into your reservoir.
If tulip bulbs are rotting in an area due to heavy spring and fall
moisture a more aggressive drain system is needed that will carry the
water down and out more quickly. Water runs down hill, so an incline to
your drain bed is needed. The more water, the more layers of decreasing
size fill is needed and the deeper one must go to drain the area. BEWARE!
Sometimes you can over do drainage and even daily watering will not keep
things moist enough! If that problem occurs, excavate and change your
"recipe" to lessen the sharpness of draining. As with all things,
experience is good guidance as to what is enough and what is too much.
Heavy water problems can be solved with this system. The bigger the area,
the bigger your drain field. Using successive layers of 1-2" roofing
stone, pea gravel, coarse sand and topsoil or garden soil. Some drains go
down a whole foot or more. The layered field can also be used with slotted
tile pipe in a sock, attached to solid pipe in some severe situations. A
one to two inch decline over many feet can take a "pond" in your lawn or
garden out to the woods or curb; to an area that it is no longer a
detriment to whatever you are trying to grow in that spot. This same
system was used repeatedly over the coarse of decades by my father who
specialized in "corrective drainage" while in the landscape contracting
field in. We employed it in many planting areas of customers yards with
much greater success of what we could grow in any given customer's yard.
(It was also used to correct basement flooding.) This will widen the
choices of what you can grow together under "normal" garden conditions
quite a bit, no matter what your limitations are at the moment.
Read more great Gardening articles at:
http://www.LostInTheFlowers.com
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