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Creative kid & adult garden projects during Corona virus

With Covid-19 virus protocols in place across the country, staying home for an undetermined length of time may be daunting. As time goes on, the walls may start to close in a little. Working, learning, and playing together at home can raise anxiety and frustrations for everyone.

If you need a respite, how about a mini-makeover for your backyard so you can relax and rejuvenate outdoors? Need a restorative garden project to engage the kids? We’re lucky to live in a part of the country where we can enjoy the outdoors many months of the year. Now, more than ever, the benefits of fresh air and a safe change of scenery can make a big difference.

Here are a few simple ideas to freshen up your outdoor space and engage your kids in interesting projects while you and your family are spending most or all of your time at home.

Shop in your own house and garden

Do you have empty pots sitting in your garage or your shed? With a little bit of soil, you may be able to create something new and pretty to set on the table. Other containers can also be used, as long as the plant is in a container with a hole in the bottom for adequate drainage.

Many of us have plants that produce pups or offshoots that can be planted into a new pot. Think airplane plants, succulents, agaves, pothos ivy among others. Walk out into the landscape and look for mini-me plants. Dig them up carefully and be sure to get as much of the root as possible.

This is a great time to engage your kids. Have them help with clipping and filling the pot with soil and ongoing watering. Have them do the research about the plant’s light and water needs. Once the plant takes root and starts to grow — voila — instant home science lesson!

Pillows and other decor

You don’t need fancy outdoor furniture, to perk up your patio or yard. Move a few indoor pillows outside (when it’s not raining) to add some cheer and make your space more inviting.

Add a little side table or t.v. tray or whatever you have sitting around inside — it can even be a crate with a tray on top of it and a placemat. Add a cup of coffee or a cocktail and take a deep breath.

Light up the night

No outdoor lighting? Not a problem. Chances are you have some holiday lights stuffed in a corner of the garage or up in your attic. Pull them out and tape or tack them around a few lawn chairs. A simple string or two of miniature lights draped from the ceiling or a pergola or even run along the fence can be very quaint and inviting. Or, find a few empty glass jars from the back of a kitchen cabinet and help the kids stuff most of the little lights into the jar and plug in the other end. Take the kids outside around dusk and tell stories sitting in the yard.

Make eating fun

If you don’t have marshmallows in the house, think about other goodies you could put on the end of a skewer or cleaned-up stick and pretend to roast marshmallows around a fire. Kids won’t care – they’d be just as happy playing make believe and eating a skewered cupcake or bite of banana bread. Heck, even a piece of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Creativity is key.

A little night music

What better to add to the calming effect of your new instant backyard paradise than the sound of bubbling water? Google meditation music with water sounds and sit together and listen to the sound of waves on the beach somewhere. Or, find some soothing music to provide background sound to sit and watch the stars

There are lots of ways to spruce up your yard and patio to create your own family retreat during these uncertain times.

Landscape Designer Diana Kirby provides landscaping tips on Facebook at Diana’s Designs and writes a gardening blog at www.dianasdesignsaustin.com where she is also available for social distance consulting via photos and phone. You can also sign up for quarterly email tips and online DIY workshops.

By Diana C. Kirby|2020-03-26T12:36:57-05:00March 26th, 2020|Agave, Articles, children, children's garden, planters, pots, projects, propagation, squid agave|1 Comment

Creating a new garden and dog-friendly landscape

We moved in June, and left behind the garden I built over 16 years. I feel like I’ve left behind so many dear friends and labors of love.

I have moved on, as the new garden really needs me desperately. The new owners of my garden have asked for my help in getting to the know the garden and how to care for it. And, they’ve been very generous about my collecting some seeds and a few volunteers as well. I look forward to teaching them to care for all my plant children.

So, the new house. The new old house. Ivy, actually, three kinds of ivy – English, Jasmine and Virginia creeper, have eaten the entire large, corner lot, and are now trying to eat the house and all of the beautiful live and red oak trees. Ugh. And because I need to keep a little of it, eradication is going to be labor-intensive to say the least.

In the back, there was a tiny square of what I believe may have once been grass. But, it was sad – invaded by ivy, a half dozen volunteer trash trees and a small circle of weeds, it was a poor excuse for a yard for the boys. So, the first step was to clear the trash trees, dig out the ivy and the primrose jasmine, and open the chain link fence to install a gate to the next grass-creating project.

Dog inspection was critical to the leveling and retaining wall work and they were eager to check out their new space.

Once done, it was a fine yard for exploring and enjoying, and a lovely loquat tree was rescued from the encroachment, providing just a little shade.

Then, onto the next part of the project. Along the back of the deck, another incredibly steep slope of ivy and trash trees. (Surprise, right?)

More leveling, more retaining walls, more soil and more Zoysia grass. Opening up the trees and adding irrigation made a great, long yard for the boys to run behind the deck all the way down to the side street to watch passersby.

A gate at the bottom gives us some more flexibility and access.

The retaining walls will hopefully keep water from rushing down the hill during the periodic gully washers.

One last dog-friendly project awaited. On a steep hill, the house has catwalks from the driveway and carport to the house. In the space below, the owners had let poor grading and dirt erode the side of the house, so we regraded, took out more volunteer trees, installed a French drain and filled the space with river rock. I had two more gates created so the dogs could run from the back yard and deck to the front next to a courtyard where they watch everyone go by the front yard.

Then it was time to create the first garden bed! Whoo hoo. I was so ready for it by this time. It was the peak of summer and I didn’t have a single flower in the ground on the entire property. I can’t tell you how depressing that was.

A spindly Crape Myrtle reached so far into the other oaks above the only bare trunks were visible, so we removed that and added an attractive curve to the river rock, building a bed behind it. A spindly Crape Myrtle reached so far into the other oaks above the only bare trunks were visible.

In sad shape, the enormous concrete wall needed attention. Step number 1 – get the bed prepped and find the right plants.

Then came concrete painting. After a good bit of pondering what color would work with the dark sage green of the house, the gray fences and the red doors, I settled on a medium shade of blue.

I decided that the iron art I designed was worthy of so much more than an air conditioning screen, so I placed three of the panels as a focal point in front of the blue. Wow, does that pop.

We’re not sure if the large plastic owls mounted all over the property were to keep the local hawk family away from their tiny dog, or to keep birds from pooping on the deck or what. But, for all the trees, there are precious few birds. I put a birdbath on the edge of the courtyard and since we are rarely out there, I’m hoping some nearby feeders and houses serve to invite some feathered friends.

Add a table, more plants and a chandelier and, voila, the perfect spot for morning coffee or afternoon iced tea. It’s starting to feel like home. Once again, I’m able to say I have a “happy place” to sit and relax.

Check back for the next saga of “Save the Garden,” where I’ll walk through the before and after of the two main beds directly in front of the house.

By Diana C. Kirby|2019-10-06T12:09:11-05:00October 6th, 2019|2019 Garden, art, beds, bird bath, dog, dogs, dry creek, Escondido Cove, focal point, garden art, garden decor, garden rooms, garden sculpture, garden whimsy, landscape design, landscape project, loquat, metal sculpture, painting, patio, patios, projects, retaining walls, river rock, river rock bed, rock, rock wall, rust, Sharing Nature's Garden, stone, stone work, Uncategorized, vine, vines, walls|13 Comments

Gardening trends in my landscape

I’m always fascinated about the transformations in the garden each year. From month to month and season to season, small adjustments often result in big changes.

Here are some of the new plants and hardscape changes in my landscape this year.

January: We enjoy watching the animals that wander, fly and hop into our garden. My husband keeps about 10 bird feeders full. We regularly see cardinals, titmice, sparrows, scrub jays and blue jays, wrens, mockingbirds, road runners, woodpeckers, finches, doves, cliff swallows, and every couple of years, a painted bunting. Several birdbaths and birdbath fountains provide water for sipping and bathing.

February: Last year, spring came very early, and the nurseries were full of beautiful plants at least a month ahead of schedule. If they are selling them, we should be buying them, right?

I didn’t count how many trips I made to our independent nurseries in Austin. Several times a year, I make all the rounds and come home with the SUV full of flowering friends.

Orders I placed over the winter also begin to arrive, ready to join the garden. The slew of catalogs, full of vibrant photos of unique plant specimens give us visions of plants as we settle in for our long winters naps

They provide promise as gardeners experiment with new colors, sizes and varieties.

March: I was delighted with the spread of my ground orchids this spring. The Bletilla striata finally began to naturalize in the woodland garden, making the shady path pop with brilliant fuchsia blooms.

April: When writing about Central Texas gardening, lush is a rarely used adjective. But, it was the perfect description for our beds after a unseasonably warm spring and much-needed rains.

May: This month marked the return of the Rio Grande Leopard frogs to the garden. We often find them resting in plants in the morning, showering in our accessible fountains during heat of the day, and skinny dipping in the pool at night. Fletcher runs around the pool in the dark, flushing them out from the neighboring plants so they jump into the pool. He whines and paces around the perimeter, frustrated that he can’t get to them. No worries, they can jump back out of the on their own.

June: With most of the garden filling nicely by the onset of the heat, I often shift my focus to decor, pots and creative elements in the landscape. This piece of aged cedar inspired me to place a few bromeliads in the shade bed. They had to come in later in the summer, but they added a nice touch for a while.

July: By now, the veggie garden provides us with an ongoing variety of great fruits and vegetables. Sadly, it is also the time for stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs to attack the tomatoes. Almost impossible to eliminate, I get depressed about the impending demise of my tomato crop. They multiply so quickly, it’s impossible to control them by hand squishing or spraying them with the hose.

August: The dog days of summer are also prime time for many of our native and adapted tropicals. Pride of Barbados, Caesalpinia pulcherrima, is bursting with blooms by now, like electric orange fireworks all over town — and along the sides of our pool.

September: This month marked the beginning of my major landscaping project for 2017. The removal of the playscape paved the way for a new garden. Eager to create something different, I settled on a pie-shaped parterre garden. Using the same Oklahoma flagstone in the existing garden path, I had my crew create a rough-edged set of symmetrical beds. To save money and recycle, I kept some of the pea gravel from the playscape area to build the pathway.

October: More progress on the parterre. We revised the existing left path to the vegetable garden, taking out the decomposed granite, flagstone steps and river rock. This path was a continual source of frustration and weeds. In spring, it brought forth a profusion of bluebonnets and winecup that were stunning. But the remaining 10 months of back-breaking proved too much. We then created a mortared flagstone path, leaving a few periodical spaces for plants — a guarantee that they wouldn’t be able to spread. I added another path to reach the new parterre.

November: Fall also brought forth blooms from the newly planted Phillipine Violet, Barleria polytricha. My first experience growing this plant, it was awelcome addition to the tropical garden.

Finally, we finished the parterre and paths. Well, almost. I still need to add one more rose bush and all the accompanying border plants in the beds. I filled the planting holes in the pathways with purslane. You can be sure I will post after pictures in the spring when the beds are full and blooming. To complete the focal points, I added a center birdbath, a wooden framed mirror on the back fence to provide interest and give the space more dimension, and a floral-themed bench to sit on and enjoy the growing garden. If you look closely, you can see my taking this photo in the mirror. Once those elements were in place, I sat on the bench and marveled that I have never really looked at my garden from that vantage point. It’s a wonderful and reflective place to sit and I’m so pleased to see my vision come to life.

December: This month shocked all Central Texas gardeners with a surprise snowfall. Not the dusting and melting immediately variety of snow we occasionally see, but a solid inch of sticking snow. It turned the garden into a southwestern version of a winter wonderland.

Luckily, the blanket of snow insulated the plants and we were spared the worst possible damage of the unseasonably early freeze.

Winter has officially settled in and January feels like January, just colder than normal. Seed catalogs sit by my chair as I cozy up to the fire with my hot tea, dreaming of garden plans to come in 2018.

What were your favorite garden additions in 2017? New plants, new beds, new hardscape — what rocked your garden last year?

By Diana C. Kirby|2018-01-13T11:42:26-06:00January 13th, 2018|beds, bench, bird feeders, birds, Bletilla Striata, bromeliads, cardinal, frog, frogs, hard scape, hardscape, path, paths, pathway, Pride of Barbados, projects, Rio Grande leopard frog, roses, Sharing Nature's Garden, snow, spring bloomers, tropicals, Uncategorized, vegetable garden, vegetables, winter|2 Comments

New dry creek project done and ready for rain!

The dry creek remodel is done and I can’t wait for it to rain so I can see how well it works.

I know that the very front of the dry creek already works because I washed all the dried dirt from the driveway puddle area into the creek bed and it just dropped down between the rocks like it’s supposed to, instead to swirling in the dirt and lapping back at me.

The moss rocks are gorgeous. (I know my crew thought I was crazy when I oohed and aahed over the great colors on them!) They’re set for the most part, but I will adjust them some more so that they look random. (I don’t really do random, so it will have to be a very carefully-arranged faux random.)

And, as always, one project begets another. During these two days, I:

created another bed which begs to be filled,
extended the path and opened up more area that needs to be planted,
removed rock from a bed that now needs more of the moss rock and Oklahoma to define it
put two new Oklahoma flagstones where old limestone steps were, so now I need a few more to make it look even nicer,
need to take all of the white/gray flat native stone that used to line the bed and move it to the back of the property to make a path to the shed so we don’t have to walk in the mud back there when it rains.

Then there are the plants. It’s time to move a few things, say good bye to a few things and go nursery trolling for some fabulous new additions to fill holes and begin new experiments.

This week’s lows in Austin range from 44 to 31 and next week’s lowest point only gets down to 39, so I will go ahead and start planting. We can most certainly have another freeze as far out as the next 4 weeks, but isn’t that what gardening is all about? Testing Mother Nature!

After the last two wonderfully warm days, I am eager to get into the garden – and glad to be done with digging and moving rock. Plants are much easier.

What tops your garden to-do list for this spring? Happy Gardening.

By Diana C. Kirby|2016-04-14T02:38:53-05:00February 22nd, 2015|Blog, drainage, dry creek, flagstone, hardscape, landscape project, moss rock, Oklahoma, path, projects, river rock, river rock bed, Sharing Nature's Garden, stepping stones, stone|0 Comments

Landscaping project solves drainage problem…

We’ve lived for 10-1/2 years with a terrible drainage problem on our front sidewalk. When we get a good rain, a lake forms in front of the front door, making it impossible to come into the house without wearing galoshes or looking for a ferry. (Well, that might be an exaggeration.) If you look carefully, the edge of the stained concrete porch stops and you can see a tiny sliver of the sidewalk on this side of the puddle before you step up to the porch.

This is only a moderately-sized lake. When we get gully washers it’s much bigger.

I try not to think about the builder and the contractor who thought it was ok to build a sloping sidewalk that comes down the hill, and then goes back up with the next piece of concrete, making a V in which water will always puddle. They did the same thing in front of our garage doors as well, making a 3-car trench over which we also have to leap when it rains.

But I digress.

So, in addition to addressing our sprinkler/rain drainage and erosion problems in the beds that line the sloping sidewalk, we are fixing the entire sidewalk.

My crew dug the sides of the sidewalk out, separated the two pieces at the angeled joint and placed a BIG ‘ol pipe under it. They then deepened my dry creek trench (the first attempt to fix the problem, but it was inadequate).

I could not believe how meticulous they were with the cement pieces as I was sure they would crack in the process – the sidewalk is 14 years old after all. They cut it to fit together so it is perfectly level and far above the trench that will carry away the water. Before, the two pieces of cement met at an angle roughly down where the pipe has been laid.

It’s hard to see, but it’s all nice and level now!

And they made great progress today on the Oklahoma flag stone cap for the limestone edging. In this photo the mortar is still wet and they haven’t finished cleaning and brushing the excess off. But you can see where it’s going.

It was cold and windy and damp and they worked really hard today. And it all looks great. I’m proud of my crew and their skills, but I really was in awe today. Craftsmanship.

Oh, and did you see all that beautiful red clay they dug out around the sidewalk in the first pictures? I’m happy to say that it is officially basura (Spanish for trash) and is going away, to be replaced by 3-way garden soil and covered with fresh native Texas hardwood mulch when the edging is all done.

It should all be finished this week. I can’t wait to see it. And I really can’t wait for the warm sunshine of spring so I can start planting in it.

By Diana C. Kirby|2017-11-29T23:27:11-06:00February 3rd, 2014|Blog, concrete, drainage, dry creek, erosion, flood, flooding, hardscape, projects, rain, river rock bed, rock, Sharing Nature's Garden, stone edging, stone work|0 Comments

Landscape bed getting stone edging facelift…

No more pondering — it’s time to get started on the next landscaping project here. In an effort to address some erosion and drainage problems and spruce up the front walkway – the beds on either side of the walkway will be getting stone edging.

As it is now, the sprinklers cause water runoff — the path here has a slight decline, but as you walk around the corner, it slopes down dramatically and turns the sidewalk into a pond in front of the porch every time it rains. And that leads to soil and mulch erosion, because the bed level is slightly higher than the walkway. And the lack of mulch along the edge also creates a weed wonderland for me.

Our house is limestone, so a 4″ limestone border will be laid, topped by a thin cap of Oklahoma flagstone in darker browns and tans.

This is what it will look like.

But no project is ever that simple. (We knew that, didn’t we?)

First, the sprinkler heads that line the bed will have to be moved inward by more than 4 inches. Then they will have to be raised to accommodate the additional yards of soil and mulch that will then have to go into the bed.

Then we’re going to raise up two sections of existing concrete to level the sidewalk and place drainage pipe under it from one side of the dry creek to the other to help with drainage.

I can’t wait for the freezing weather to be over so I can visit all my favorite nurseries and put pretty plants into the garden. But, this is winter and I can’t do that yet. So, hard scape it is.

I hope when it’s all finished, the pretty, newly-lined beds will be ready to welcome spring and a bevy of new plants.

I can’t wait…

By Diana C. Kirby|2016-04-14T02:39:27-05:00January 31st, 2014|Blog, edging, hard scape, hardscape, landscape project, projects, rock, Sharing Nature's Garden, stone edging, stone work|0 Comments

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