Remember: Never base important decisions about gardening from a blog.
First of all let's make this perfectly clear. While our first public project might be our last public project and while at times this blog might make it sound like we do not taking things seriously. We in fact take our projects very seriously.
Let me also stress that while we might joke about beer we take our beer pretty seriously and while we do have a beer or two it's not like a sixer of Bud dude. It's more like one or two Sticky McDoogle's from Ale Asylum.
Anyway - I'm Rod Melotte (Grinder) and my partner in crime is Brian Elwood (Elwood). Elwood lives in Madison and has no access to garden space, particularly boulder walls. So my boulder wall at home in Columbus has been a learning/testing area.
What we find amazing is that the two of us, in the last four years and over a few beers and with very little knowledge about gardening can put together a pretty nice landscaping scheme. It's call obsessing. We have often talked about our own gardening reality show, if we can do it, you can do it.
We have managed to take a quarter acre of raw topsoil and make it into . . NOT top soil. We have built simple walls for gardens, pathways and planted hundreds of ground covers and perennials. And what surprises us is that we have only lost three plants (that we know of).
Photo of my yard - everything here was just dirt 4 years ago.
One day we drove past the water tower on Tower Drive and he drooled over the blight of boulder's and was wondering if perhaps he could use the wall for some orphan ground covers. I said I would look around to see who owned the land.
One thing leads to another and before you know it I'm on a conference call and John (Superintendent Columbus Water and Light) who says "Rod - you have 30 seconds, give a spiel" . GULP!! I used the entire 30 seconds minus 10 seconds and included the word FREE a few times and I believe BEAUTIFY once. Seemed to work. Elwood and I had a gig.
At first we were thinking we could just take out ALL the rocks and rearrange them in some semblance of order. The main problem was that each boulder weighted like over a ton and the fear of the water tower collapsing and the two of us becoming known throughout the world as the two guys that toppled a water tower trying to plant phlox . . . .we decided to use the rocks in their current configuration.
Another problem both Elwood and I had was the fact that neither of us had ever tried repelling down a cliff, but after seeing the wall again it was not as daunting as our imaginations had led us to believe. No repelling would be involved.
PHASE ONE:
The step BEFORE the 1st step was to document what was there already (for insurance reason I suppose) so this is what we were working with.
If you look closely you will see a lot of weeds which we both agreed was actually a good thing. Weeds mean dirt and most rock walls are lacking dirt. Of course one concern was what if by pulling the weeds we would weaken the structure of the wall. But we decided that if the wall was depending on the weeds to keep it up . . . there were bigger issues to be concerned with.
We already have a quasi-plan in place on the types of ground cover. We will need some drought resistant plants as there will be no watering available, even though it is under a water tower and tapping into the tower was discussed but . . .that might be construed as an act of terrorism or something and we were already on the lookout for the local gendarmes.
Note: we are a little concerned about the watering situation in the first critical few years.
After getting an overall view it was time to jump in and get to know the rocks. We climbed around looking at our canvas and discussing what cover would work best and where. Some ground covers like to hang and some like to climb and some need shelves while others need holes and it looks like at some point in the past someone had tried to plant a few things which died.
The trick in this type of no tend garden is to find the right plant for the right place as they will be on their own for the most part.
One of the great things we discovered is that the wall is RIPE for this type of work. The wall is not straight vertical like many rock walls and there are all sorts of wonderful nooks and crevices which are . . . . wonderful.
One section near the top has a fantastic feature and with more dirt will be a center piece and as luck would have it . . it's in the center.
It was time to dig in and begin Phase One, ripping out all the weeds. So we went back to our place, opened a couple Scotch Ales (Robert the Bruce brewed by Three Floyds - we drink nothing but the best while on the job) and created a plan.
The car was loaded with worker stuff and off we went to unweed the Tower Rocks.
We then spent the next couple hours ripping out weeds, collecting pop cans and garbage which had made it into the rockery and creating a mess. Oddly - no bugs or vermin were spotted.
Car's were slowing down and rubber necking trying to see what we were doing and every so often we would see a walker switch sides and walk on the other side of the street as weeds were flying right and left.
We ripped out three large black garbage bags of garbage, raked everything up and completed Phase One.
Here are the results.
PHASE TWO, which will begin October 2nd is the beginning of the augmentation phase as we mix the clay with top soil and compost. We want to have a chance for dirt to sit and settle for the winter before we plant anything.
And I should add this is all volunteer work, the city and Water and Light who own the property are getting this for free . . . of course any donations of good dirt would be welcome . . just sayin.
The actual plants will come from purchases next year along with plants we have grown in my rock wall. We plan on only 3 or 4 varieties. The last thing we want is a polka-dot wall with 10 different plants. Our vision is large splash of color. The wall will be covered with only a few perfect plants and will be amazingly beautiful down the road with cascading color matching the rocks and when not in flower will have a wonderful texture.
Let me stress - this is a multi-year project and a labor of love.
The below is the main rock wall at my house(one of 4) and is sort of a testing area to see what plants actually look like "live" as opposed to catalogs. This is a combination of 1 and 2 year old ground covers taken early September.
That is the story as of Sept 21 2010 - stay tuned.
Rod
