ALTAR GARDEN MAKE-OVER
May 16, 2010
What's left of the Cascading Rosemary planter gets a make-over into the "Altar Garden."
Pics Lobo Solo (Matrix) Blackberry phone camera.
This project started Saturday AM about 8:00 AM until about
5:00 PM non-stop -this was the first step. Before this picture was taken the
rocks generally made a circle and in the inside was much weeds, lots of dirty
old sea shells -like trash, stray gravel, an old pine tree stump, and dead
cascading rosemary stumps and branches, all but two died away over the years.
This "front and center" garden looked a mess. So, I (Solo), disassembled the
ring of rock border and then proceeded to "clean" the soil and turn it for
debris. I removed the old pine tree stump and then the rest of the bramble by
hand with a wire mesh screen sifting several cubic feet of soil -this took many
hours and a gallon of drinking water. I filled a 55 gallon trashcan right to the
brim with gravel and debris. I worked a straight nine hours happily in the
desert sun of Landers that Saturday. The result was a trash-free soil already
mulched from the years of cascading rosemary living in the little garden area.
This picture shows the stage after the soil was sifted for debris. You can just
make out the two remaining cascading rosemary bushes which are pretty healthy
and had been trimmed by someone else, they resemble Japanese bonsai juniper
trees.
Just another angle of the same thing. The piles of gravel and
debris on the pavement.
Now, to the task of re-building the rock border.
Re-assembly of the rock border begins. 'Seems I enlarged the
garden a bit as I had to "pilfer" more of the larger rocks from other places on
the property to complete the ring of rock. These pictures don't do justice to
the different kinds of beautiful rocks. Some where amazing, some had ultra cool
shiny stuff. I had only this two-day weekend to accomplish my task or I would
have taken more detailed photos. Mohabee took more, but not available yet. OK,
so now on to the next step. It is now Sunday...
Now that rack border is in place, the crevasses in between
shored up with smaller rock so the soil wouldn't just run out between the rocks
when watered. Now the process of leveling the soil begins. The rosemary plants
were "propped up" a bit with rocks to keep them from laying directly on the
soil.
The soil is leveled and a surplus of soil is left over. To
make the garden a little more interesting the left over mound of soil will be
formed into a tier with additional smaller rocks for the tier border wall.
The final product. Horrible picture... but the tier is in back
behind the center bush, a border of small rocks around each of the rosemary
bushes and two halves of a brilliantly iridescent abalone shell adorns the front
of the rosemary bush rock borders with pearly quartz geode shards set inside the
shell halves. Later will come irrigation and more plant varieties.
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