The best laid garden plans...

Start here: a short history and tour of Woodside.

Our garden at Woodside began as a swath of cleared hillside, as blank of a slate as you could get. We took down almost 2 acres of trees and mulched them in place. It smelled like cedar for months.

The house and garden are situated on what I would come to learn is called a “bench” in technical geological terms. Wikipedia does a good job of explaining what this is:

In geomorphology, geography and geology, a bench or benchland is a long, relatively narrow strip of relatively level or gently inclined land that is bounded by distinctly steeper slopes above and below it. Benches can be of different origins and created by very different geomorphic processes.

Essentially, we are perched halfway up the south-west side of hill on a perfectly-sized sliver of mostly flat-ish land. This creates an interesting microclimate for us throughout the seasons in a couple of ways:

In the fall and spring we often avoid the more mild frosts that settle on the lower fields below us. The hillside also shelters us from some of the cold winter winds that blow through and keeps us just a little warmer than it would be further up or down. This can buy us a few extra weeks on either end of the planting season and has sometimes saved early blooming flowers from getting frost-bit.

In the summer, it is usually a couple of degrees cooler thanks to the slightly higher altitude and the trees that surround us on every side. The wind that can get bitterly cold in the winter becomes a gentle breeze that is a momentary relief from the heat and humidity. We left some older trees in the actual garden, so dappled shade protects many areas from the brutal noon sun in the summer. Even plants that are full sun seem to appreciate it, especially this summer, where there has been limited rain and an abundance of 100°+ days.

Our soil also has a very technical name: Colluvium. Wikipedia has this to say about that:

Colluvium (also colluvial material or colluvial soil) is a general name for loose, unconsolidated sediments that have been deposited at the base of hillslopes by either rainwash, sheetwash, slow continuous downslope creep, or a variable combination of these processes. Colluvium is typically composed of a heterogeneous range of rock types and sediments ranging from silt to rock fragments of various sizes.

For those of us who are not geologists and are rather people who just want to build a house and do a bit of gardening, this basically translates to having soil that is very bad for building houses on and a little tricky for gardening in.

Imagining a garden

Not all gardens have to begin with a rigid design or a plan, but it is helpful to have a few ideas before you plant anything that cannot be easily dug up and moved later or install any paths or structures.

We began with a few elements that we knew needed to be a part of our plan:

1. A kitchen garden to grow fruit and veg with paved paths (because weeding mulched / gravel paths is a nightmare).

2. A greenhouse to start seeds in and overwinter tender tropicals.

3. A space for a Japanese garden (because it’s something we very much wanted to design).

4. An area for our chickens to range outside their coop / run.

Then, we spent almost a year simply observing:

We watched how the sun moved through the sky and hit the garden in spring, summer and fall.

We watched what happened when it rained - where the water flowed, which areas stayed dry, which areas stayed soggy.

We tested our soil to understand the PH level and if there were any nutritional deficiencies that we would need to address.

All these environmental factors would play the largest role in how our garden was laid out and what we could grow successfully. I have found that, in almost all cases, it is easier to work with soil and light than to try and fight against it. Nature usually wins.

By the end of that first year, we had a rough plan for what we wanted to do.

Our garden plan

We knew that we wanted to use hedges to create distinct garden rooms so that we could play with wildly different garden styles and create a sense of being fully immersed in each space. We used 160 yews to create the hedgerows.

1. The Wall Garden
   There is a two-tier retaining wall that runs the entire length of the house, where we had to carve away the hillside. Since it faces our main outdoor entertaining space, this garden is designed to feel lush and tropical with hints of the Mediterranean. Because it’s often used at night, we chose to limit the color palette to white flowering plants. At night, it almost glows against the dense woods behind them.
   
   Stars of this garden include the big windmill palm, four types of figs, white flowering Hardy Hibiscus, White Butterfly Bushes, First Night Napier Grass and Gaura ‘Whirling Butterflies.’ It’s not much to look at during the winter and early spring, but it shines the rest of the year.
   

2. The Long Walk
   This avenue runs the length of our garden and offers access to each of the garden rooms. Bordered by yews on either side, this space is defined by straight, crisp lines of grass and hedgerows.
   

3. The Wedge Garden

   This small sliver of a garden sits right next to the house and is named for its shape. It receives sun most of the morning and then gets sharply shaded from the house by mid-afternoon. The space is anchored by Silver Zebra grass and has Magnolia and Azalea whose flower will waft through the porch near our master bedroom.
   

4. The Vegetable Garden
   In every house we have lived, we have had some kind of vegetable garden. Nothing compares to wandering out in the morning to pick what’s ripe to incorporate in meals for the day. Over the years, we have learned what works for us and what doesn’t. This space combines all those lessons learned. Composed of mostly raised beds, including one dedicated to cut flowers, there’s also a blueberry bed, a raspberry/blackberry bed and an herb bed. There’s enough space to plant a few columnar apple trees and experiment with things like gooseberries and currants. And it is all anchored by a generous 8x12’ greenhouse.
   

5. The Orchard
   Centrally located, this space is a utility area and the working heart of the garden. It houses our chickens, tool shed, and compost bins. We also have an assortment of dwarf fruit trees growing here including tart cherry trees and an Asian pear. Long term, we’ll fence this area off to allow our chickens to free range under the safety of the canopy of the fruit trees where they should be safe from hawks.
   

6. The Perennial Garden
   This space is a mix of sun and light shade and is the most traditional of all our garden spaces. To challenge ourselves, we are sticking closely to a palette of yellow and pink in the spring, transitioning to orange and purple in the summer. This is also where we grow a lot of our pollinator-friendly plants and even in its early days, it’s starting to buzz with bees and butterflies.
   

7. The Japanese Garden

   I think Japanese Gardens are distantly beautiful. To me, they always have a cool, calm, peaceful feel. So when we talked about what we could do with one of our smallest spaces, we instantly knew that we wanted to design a traditional Japanese-style garden.

Tips for designing your garden

To me, planning a new garden is a little like the first day of school or New Year’s Day. There is a buffet of possibilities spread out before you and there is nothing you can’t do as long as you can imagine it. Everything is potential. If you are lucky enough to live somewhere for long enough to see your garden grow into what you visualize, that too is a great joy.

We still have a lot of planning left to do in our space, but as we coast through our second summer here, we are finally starting to see the bones of everything and it’s easier to imagine how it might look in another four or five years.

Maybe you are moving to a new house, maybe you are creating a new garden from an abandoned corner of your yard, or maybe you just are redesigning a space that never quite felt right. Regardless, if you are about to embark on designing a new garden, here are my best tips for doing it well:

• Spend time observing your garden in Spring, Summer, and Fall, if you can. Notice the direction of the sun and how it moves in the sky from morning to night and from season to season. Test to find out the type of soil you have so you can amend as necessary. Identify any problem areas: spots that stay flooded, are dry, or have particularly bad soil. Are there any pockets where it’s sheltered and warmer? Or spots that are particularly exposed to the winds? At the end of the day, it’s much easier to make a successful garden when you don’t fight against your environment.

• Plant what you love. A garden is a deeply personal affair and so it should be filled with trees and shrubs and flowers that you love and bring you happiness. Don’t plant something you hate because someone said it was a good plant to have in a particular spot.

• Make rules and then follow them. Sometimes we are most creative when we are constrained. Choose a theme or color palette for your garden and design within those guidelines. But also, don’t be afraid to sometimes break your own rules.

• Look at other gardens; in your city, when you travel, or online. This is the best way to get ideas and bring them home. I have never visited another garden and not come home with at least one small thing I wanted to try and replicate.