Seven Steps to Making a Woodland Garden

When we moved here in 1985, there was a wild area in a little valley on the other side of the drive. It was grown over with tangles of vines as thick as my wrist and weeds that could swallow a man whole. Bad boys in the neighborhood sometimes would go down there to read girly magazines and smoke cigarettes. They once caught the woods on fire, and Helena's fire department had to come put out the blaze. 

Each year Lou and I would attempt to tame the rampant overgrowth, and I came to understand how my state acquired its name. Alabama comes from an old Choctaw Indian word meaning "I clear the thicket." 

Indeed.

One year I decided to turn the area into a garden. It contained some beautiful dogwood, oak, and pine trees, but part of it was sunny and I didn't deliberately decide to create a woodland garden. For years I called it my weed garden, because at first most of the plants could be classified as that. But a lot of them bloomed, so I welcomed them into my scheme. Over time the space took on its own character and told me what to do with it.

It was an enormous project, but each step was an improvement. Here is what I did, gradually as energy and budget allowed:

1. I cut meandering paths through the weeds and around the trees with a string trimmer. I kept the paths cut to the ground on a regular schedule, and I added rocks along the edge of parts of the paths to better define them.

2. Where necessary, I limbed up trees overhanging the paths so I could walk easily under them.

3. I smothered large areas of obnoxious weeds. I used brown grocery sacks, newspaper, and cut-up cardboard boxes. I put these on top of the weeds, then covered them with a thick mulch of pine straw. This immediately made the space look better and eventually improved the soil. I also continued to hand pull weeds and spray stuff like poison oak with round-up.

4. I cut holes through the pine straw mulch and began planting. On the hillside I planted ground covers, including mondo grass, spreading cotoneaster, junipers, and a number of shrubs and trees. I incorporated preexisting plants such as native yaupon holly, mahonia and nandina. I continued to add new plants each spring and fall, among which are:

hosta, ferns, and heuchera

Japanese maple

fothergilla

viburnum

azalea

yew

and many more!

5. I discovered that moss grew naturally in the paths I had cut, so I began encouraging its growth by sprigging pieces of it throughout the paths and by keeping fallen leaves raked away. Eventually the moss grew thick enough that I no longer had cut the paths with a string trimer. Hooray! Now I just hand pull weeds from time to time. As more moss fills in, I am having to do even this less often.

6. I added some manmade focal points with a rabbit at the entrance and a little bench for sitting to enjoy it all. I hung some wind chimes and a birdhouse.

7. One day I blinked and discovered that it had become a shady, even romantic retreat, and I began to officially call it my woodland garden.

Here are some recent images taken in the woodland garden:

And a few featured plants:Clockwise from top left: heuchera 'tiramisu'; fothergilla gardenii; autumn fern; korean spice viburnum

May you all take time to walk in a woodland, to listen to birds and to feel a breeze; may you fill your heart in the embrace of nature.  Deborah

You can see more images taken recently of the woodland garden in my last post, A Crime Scene on a Beautiful Day.

Are You a Plant Snob?

Are you a plant snob? Do you want the new, the rare, the difficult plant that most gardeners don't have? Or are you content with the common plant that grows in everybody else's garden and are quite grateful it will grow also in yours?

Camellia and forsythia, both common plants, are blooming now in my garden.

My last post was on forsythia, and commenters mentioned its commonness.  Many of us have it growing in our own gardens or our neighborhoods. A lot of us remember it from childhood. That commonness, in a way, is what makes forsythia special. It is a homely plant with a cheerful spring countenance. We are familiar with it. It is reliable. We trust it. It's like mama giving us a smile and a peanut butter sandwich. 

But who wants to sit at home with mama all the time? We need a little of the wild life too, and so we flirt with exotics or unfamiliar plants. These may ultimately give us great pleasure. Or they could turn out all wrong, misbehaving badly, clashing with the other plants, or dramatically dying on us.

Plant snobs rarely come home to mama. They may not think about the commoners at all. They explore the plant world, always seeking a new herbaceous thrill and striving for greatness. Their gardens may be wonders of art or stunning collections. Common gardeners may drop their jaws at the sight and think, that's nice to look at, but who wants to live that way?

I tend toward the common, because if a plant survives my climate, that automatically earns points from me. I have some plants which are not very common, but I think they would be, if only they had better press coverage.

An example is fothergilla gardenii. It is my favorite shrub. It's easy to grow. It has fragrant bottlebrush flowers in the spring and beautiful blue-green foliage that turns spectacular colors in the fall. Who wouldn't love that plant? But they aren't that easy to find, and a local nursery owner told me he can't get anyone to buy it.Fothergilla blooms

Fothergilla foliage in the summer

Fothergilla fall colors

I like to seek out, not so much rare or difficult plants, but plants that are under-appreciated. Dwarf Japanese andromeda, pieris japonica yakushimunum 'Cavatine', grows in my garden. I love its lily of the valley type flowers, but I don't see a lot of pieris growing in my area.Dwarf Japanese andromeda is about to bloom in my garden.I think the best gardeners are those who take common plants as well as lesser known plants and put them all together to create a welcoming environment. We need the comfort of the familiar, but we also need the delight of the unusual or unexpected. It's a pleasure to get ideas or learn about new plants. We want to spend time in such a garden, soaking it all in. Just maybe it's a place to spread a blanket and share some peanut butter sandwiches with a sweetheart.

That is a great garden.