New path & garden bed

The east side of the house before we installed the new windows. I knew I wanted this area to be something beautiful and useful, as it's an ideal spot for some privacy planting along the lot line fence, and is where the sun comes spilling in every morning.

The most important work that needed to be done here was removing the rot as you can see on the bottom section of this wall, putting in a drainage trench, installing the wood stove and putting up new gutters. You can see the Russian Sage I chaotically placed when the idea of a long bed came to mind, but at this point I didn't have the design figured out.

I also needed to put up some fencing here under the sour cherry tree to keep the dogs and deer out of the veg garden.

Naturally, I just started digging and made decisions as I went, as digging this up took some time.

I used wood from the barn for edging, dug up all the grass, laid cardboard then mulch. I think at this point I realized I wanted to make a bed all along the property line fence the whole way down to the veg garden.

Sorry for the dark photo, I worked until I couldn't see anymore, and after this I stopped taking progress photos for a while. You can see I successfully laid the wood straight (enough) and reused the soil I dug up to build up the bed.

Fast forward, you can see here at the far end where I stopped digging the path, and the reason for that is the animal feeder is still attached to the barn and I wasn't sure what to do from the feeder to the veg garden.

Mom, Dad and I decided to rip out the animal feeder, and it was a lot of work! There were a TON of old nails and it took the strength of the sawzall and crowbars. I kept the wood for use in any future projects, I'm sure I'll use it for something. I forgot to take photos of that.

The soil sifter I made did a great job at separating the many rocks and roots. I put a lot of the rocks back down under the mulch and cardboard pathways for better drainage and all of the soil went on the very long, new bed.

Finished. Now the ground isn't elevated next to the stall door and I already have some great new plants in the bed.

I planted two blueberry plants, one blooms early and the other later, white sage, oregano, wallflower, rosemary, thyme. It's very free draining soil and this photo is aimed directly south, so I figure it's a good place to grow herbs as this end of the bed gets full sun all day.

I know a lot will change here even just this spring and summer, and I'm looking forward to those successes and failures. I have a ton of seeds I'll sow this month so there will be wildflowers and lots of milkweed growing scattered around here and the rest of the property.

I can't wait.