Memory Garden in review

After our friend Armando passed away in early 2017, I wanted to channel my grief into something meaningful. I imagined a memory garden planted in the parking strip on the south side of our property. I pictured a cottage-type garden crowded with blooming plants and attracting pollinators, especially bees and butterflies.

In the spring and summer of 2017, I planted perennial seeds to grow a volume of plants to set out in the spring of 2018.

Trays of seedlings destined for the memory garden.

A tray with dozens of perennial seedlings from June 2017.

In the autumn of 2017, we had a large load of bark delivered. We laid down various weed barriers and then piled about 8″ to 10″ of bark on top of that to kill all the weeds and grass.

Bohdi the Barker on top of Bark Mountain

HERE is a video showing where all the bark ended up.

I needed to be absolutely sure the grass was dead, so we left the deep bark on all fall/winter of 2017/2018. Mistakenly, I thought the best place to keep the perennial seedlings would be in nursery beds outside, so I planted many of them in the raised vegetable beds.

HERE is a video showing all the little seedlings tucked into their veggie bed winter home.

When I went to dig up the seedlings that were wintered over in the veggie beds, many of them had disappeared. There were still enough to plant about 1/3 of the parking strip, which I got done in spring. The seedlings included columbine, campion, catmint, lupine, licorice mint, coreopsis, oriental poppy, verbena, echinacea, dianthus, and more. I had purchased tiny starts of asters and sedums, as well, and those were planted out in spring. The other purchased plants included peonies, calceolaria, hardy geraniums, and blue-eyed grass. I started planting in March.

It was hard work getting the seedlings planted–the bark had to be removed and the seedlings and fertilizer added through cuts in the landscape cloth, then bark put back around them. The planted area in the photo took an entire weekend in March.

We left the bark and covers in place through the fall and winter. Leon helped me with some hardscaping–we put in a little patio for the garbage, recycle and yard waste cans.

I love the way these slate tiles look, but they were really fragile–we broke 3 or 4 of them!

By May, the garden looked like THIS and THIS already!

I kept planting seedlings and purchased plants through early summer to get the garden about 1/2 completed. Additions included more campions, columbines, peonies, asters, Santa Barbara daisies, dianthus and a wild rose I grew from seed. Further additions were put off until fall.

HERE is what the garden looked like by September 8th.

In the fall, I planted most of the other perennial seedlings and some other purchased plants, including daylilies, kniphofia, gluacium, asters, thyme, oregano, veronica, rose, abelia, lysimachia and more. I also purchased some tulips, hyacinths, camassias, and corydalis bulbs for the eastern end of the bed.

I’ll just post more photos and videos here showing how the garden has progressed since last fall.