A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust
~ Gertrude Jekyll
If you have been following my garden journey for a while you know that the bane of my gardening existence is flooding. I live in fear Spring-Summer of the heavy rains that threaten to wash away my garden, leaving me with soggy roots and floating leaves.
But I was taught never to live life in fear. After losing several beautiful backyard gardens – it was time to take charge and come up with some alternative gardening solutions. I searched my gardening books, drooled over the gardens on my favorite Instagram accounts, spoke with my dad and husband and together we finally hatched a plan for world domination… Well garden domination.. Flood domination?
For phase 1 of the plan, the first hurdle we needed to overcome was the actual flooding itself. Since it wasn’t practical to bring in enough dirt to raise the entire gardening area – we needed to create something that would raise the actual garden. My dad’s solution – raised garden beds. But not just any raised garden beds, hand crafted raised garden beds. My dad, who also builds and restores wooden boats, went to work in his workshop building two long beautiful garden beds for the garden redesign.
Now that we have the beautiful garden beds, it is time to start Phase 2 of the project – prepping the space… If you look closely at the first flood picture you can see our new boxes in the distance, standing strong and fighting the rising waters. I am confident that once we are ready to start planting they will hold up to the elements ready to fight whatever comes their way! Plus the plastic flamingos are looking forward to standing in their new tall perches.
Happy planting and eating!
~ The Gardening Dietitian