Restoring the ecology of your backyard (and front yard, too)

We've embarked on our second restoration project, in the landscape of our small house in the mountains of North Carolina.  I was reminded of this, prompted to reflect on how I became a gardener.

I was an ecologist first, as was my gardening companion (aka my husband Tim), but we were glad to transform our barren (read lawn-rich) landscape in the Piedmont, to a habitat garden full of life today. 

It's what I count as being one of the most rewarding experiences that I've had as a gardener.

It wasn't hard, or especially time-consuming; it just required finding the plants we wanted (largely native), digging holes (Tim did most of that), and getting started. I added vegetable garden beds in two areas (and would love to expand them, but, you need to be mindful of the time it takes to tend to pampered domesticated crops!...)

In the mountains, we had nothing much more than mulch with a few plants in front, and below the house, a few plantings descending to an invasive-rich forest. 

Uh, we thought we wanted a low-maintenance landscape, but it was SO depressing to have bare gravel and mulch, where plants could thrive.  So that didn't last long and I've made a number of posts already about the progress of our mountain landscape and garden. 

Thinking about a garden studio down the slope encouraged us to embrace that part of our landscape;  the studio project turned into a sunroom and deck expansion project which was much more rewarding and makes a lot more sense.  I'm looking forward to using the sunroom as my 'studio' this summer (it's almost finished)!

Thank goodness my gardening companion enjoys the physical activity of moving mulch and rooting out invasive ivy, privet, honeysuckle, etc.  He's a leaf collecting devotee, too. 

It's my 'job' to put in the understory woodland herbaceous layer on the ravine slope -- a fun one, to be sure.  I'll be planning the bed layout this summer.

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Swallowtail Gardens

I visited Swallowtail Gardens last weekend, a wonderful garden and small nursery in the mountains of Western North Carolina.  I've only had time to post a couple of photos previously, and was foiled in posting later last week when Blogger was down.

But here's a better sampling. 

It's a delightful garden, reflecting the gardeners who live there. It's full of treasures.

If you have a chance to visit (by appointment), it's SO worth the drive up to a cove in the North Carolina mountains past Mars Hill.  And seek out their plants at regional venues in the spring (see their website for details).

A grassy entrance path

A typical eclectic mix of plants

Dwarf conifers are woven throughout the garden.

Looking back towards the old tobacco barn

Woodland garden plantings towards the house

Rock work through the garden is full of plants tucked in crevices.

Or spilling over edges.

Much of the rock came from the site, with some judicious additions.

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Woodland paths

The path to our front door is finally taking on the feel of a woodland path, happily.  In the second year after planting, the Christmas ferns, bloodroot, wild gingers, crested iris, and other (tough) woodland wildflowers are looking good.

The rhododendrons are in flower now, so it feels a bit like being in the mountains.

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Native woodland gardens

I've been working on a species list for plants to add in the understory of our ravine forest in the mountains.  It's much more moist than our created Piedmont woodland because of the slope and deep shade.  We've also added LOTS of leaves and mulch, to add to the existing fairly rich soil.

Piedmont front yard, 1993

In the Piedmont, we started from lawn, so our incipient forest (on the slope in the front of the house) is just now starting to be a multi-layer canopy of taller oaks (white and chestnut in addition to the red oaks already here), with tulip poplars, maples, beech, and sassafras, black gum and sourwood on the woodland margin.

Through the front gate, Fall 2008

With an mixed understory of redbuds, dogwood, rhododendron (deciduous and evergreen), fothergilla, paw-paw, and bottlebrush buckeye, it's an eclectic representation of an Eastern woodland forest habitat.

Out the front door in the Piedmont, 2009

The mulching has now gone on for over 15 years, so the soil is built up quite nicely, but it still isn't quite suitable for moisture-loving forest herbs, at least without supplemental summer watering.

Mountain ravine in winter

So I'm hopeful that our mountain habitat will be hospitable for many of our native woodland wildflowers (plus the understory shrubs such as Rhododendron calendulaceum, Flame Azalea and trees such as Fraser's Magnolia, Magnolia fraseri).

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