100ft Hedgerow

This fence is on the west boundary of the property and I'm looking directly south in this photo. I'm a big fan of hedgerows, they provide protection as a wildlife corridor, a wind break, for privacy and they can be beautiful and full of life. This fence already had some rogue honey suckle, nutka rose and blackberries but it was very sparsely grown in and I had to do something about it.

After a ton of research and out of consideration for my neighbors house on the other side of the fence I decided against planting a line of trees. The house is close to the fence and most of their windows face this direction so trees would have grown to block all of their light.

I'm using the hose as a marker to figure out how large to make this, how much grass to dig out, how far apart to plant from the fence and while still deciding which plants to use.

Yes, I used a shovel and wheelbarrow to dig up the grass and move it to another part of the field, and made a berm. This took some time. I dug 5 feet from the fence at first then decided to dig out another foot so I could plant at least 5 feet from the fence.

Still figuring things out, I moved a spikey plum type tree, that needed to be moved anyways, over by the fence to see if that's where it should. It didn't want to be there.

I had a pile of soil from the other projects, so I moved this soil to the new hedgerow to raise the planting zone up.

I decided on pacific wax myrtle, a plant native to this region. A friend and I went out to a wholesale nursery in the Skagit valley and I bought 16 one-gallon plants at $12/each.

They are planted 5 feet apart and are 5 feet from the fence. I laid some of the pieces of soil and grass I dug up along the fence line, thinking I could leave them there to fill in but after this photo I decided to dig the grass all the way to the fence. I wanted a path to walk behind the hedge for future pruning. After the summer I bought 4 more one-gallon pacific wax myrtle and dug out another 20+ feet to extend the hedgerow.

Knowing the plants won't be a hedge for a few years, I planted a ton of sunflower seeds I saved from last years garden and various wildflowers. I had a constant succession of gorgeous flowers from spring through fall!

Late spring morning sun.

Letting the field grow was the best change of the year. Shasta daisy, yarrow, red poppies, dandelion covered the fields and I could wander through on the mowed paths. It buzzed with bees, flys, birds, spiders, gopher snakes...sometimes I'd go out and just lay in it and listen.

There's a ton of mustard in this photo, which at the start of summer was pulled out with the help of Mom, Dad, and Cyprus. Coming from Santa Barbara, we see how mustard bullies out all native plants and the hillsides become a monoculture.

Poppies from the hedgerow, purply yarrow and pink cornflower with shasta daisy in the field.