Tree House Tree

Tree house Tree

This big old pine used to be home to a simple deer stand. It also happens to live at the entrance to the future food forest. You can see the old gate post laying on the ground in the front of the before picture. Just through that old gate is the turn around that was cleaned up in a previous post. Three strands of barbed wire still run from the tree off to the right. This morning I cleared out some younger pines, a couple of miscellaneous hardwood trees that just happened to be living in the wrong place at the wrong time and a lot of little privet shoots from the tree house area. In the after picture, from left to right, Meredithe, Amelia and Carley are marking the corners of a rectangle of pines that I left for possible supports for a raised deck area off of the tree house. Additional supports will almost certainly be necessary, but having the live trees on the corners would really be beautiful. I realize it's a fairly large area, but if you're going to dream, you might as well dream big. 

Wedding Garden Map

This is a visual representation of the progress of the garden to date. The top is the North side, please note the compass rose in the bottom left. The arbor hasn't been constructed yet, it's position is a place holder for right now.

The four wispy looking things on the corners represent the rosemary bushes. The six flowers with the green background represent the gardenia bushes. The four big white flowers represent the azaleas. The two bushes on the right with the large clusters of little white flowers represent the butterfly bushes.

Wedding Garden Border

This is an outdated picture at this point, since so much has changed already this Spring, but it gives you an idea of the area. This is part of the main pasture that you saw in a previous post. The section that has been taken down fairly low to the ground with the weed whacker is about 50'x60'. The sections of really dirty lattice are parallel to the longer 60' sides of what will be the wedding garden. They're held up by PVC pipes that are buried in the ground about a foot and a half. Not cemented, just buried. Not sure how well they'll hold up, but they're really just there to hold back the blackberries this summer. All of the lattice and posts are re-purposed from the rose garden near the front of the property. The garden itself will be 40'x60', but we trimmed down the extra 5' on the longer Northern and Southern edges while we put in the flowering shrubs etc that will become the border of the garden. The corners are marked with posts, and there are black planters on top of them to make them more visible for the picture. The cinder block half way across the far side is marking where the arbor will be placed. There are mounds behind this flatter area that we may flatten out when we put down some clover this Spring, but they may be left through the wedding and flattened out when we have the heavy equipment in to repair the driveway and prepare the site for building our home.

The only bushes in place in this photo are four azaleas. They have white blooms on them already this Spring. Meredithe wanted mainly white flowers for the wedding, so we went with the white azaleas. It was pouring when we put in 12 more bushes this past weekend, so I don't have photos yet, but I think we've planted all of the main perennials that we're going to plant this Spring. The four corners marked by posts in this picture are now home to 4 large rosemary clippings taken from a relatives bush, hopefully they'll take root and thrive. Spaced 10' apart between the rosemary and azaleas are 6 gardenia bushes, Meredithe's favorite. The near border in this photo is now home to two white flowering butterfly bushes, 10' in from each corner. Putting them in during a rainstorm was quite pleasant! It made the dirt easier to move, even though it was heavy. It also kept it cool even though we were out in the open. I'll be sure to post pictures soon so you can see the full layout.