Ooops! Forgot to post the link to the foto referenced in the last post. I'll throw it in when I get a chance.

The children's/cottage garden is a planned 20x20-ish foot area on one side of the front yard; the other side holds a majestic tree that will provide shady sitting for visiting with passers-by, and eventually woodland/shade plants; we want to eliminate as much mowing as possible, over time. Separating these two sections, there's an existing concrete, straight front walk from front door to sidewalk. We plan to replace that with a meandering gravel path after we're all done moving in (when Hardi retires), but for now it's great for unloading!

I got the idea for the children's garden from seeing how sparse are activities for the kids in that large neighborhood. Once they're old enough to leave their own yard, there's not much for them except trouble, and pedophiles, especially for the boys. We got a lot of longing glances from kids passing by, when I started work out there with helpers in September.

This suggested that a cottage-garden (with little paths snaking thru to pick peppers, see new things coming up, etc.) would offer a chance to involve neighborhood families in a TV-less, healthy, ongoing activity.

So I've drawn a plan for a centerpiece, for that section of the property, of tall, flowering plants. That's what my $50 bought-- a place to start that whole thing up. There is already a children's table and chair in the now-existing bedding area right in front of the kitchen windows. They fill a gap in the existing plantings of hollies.

The spring plan for the rest of that hlf of the front yard is to kill off a lot of crabgrass by the lasagna-gardening method of layering newspaper, compost, and bark mulch. This will outline the whole, eventual planting area and I can start to lay out the paths, yard sculpture, etc.

On top of that mulch I can scatter potted plants when I'm there, to play with color and texture ideas before we live there fulltime and I can put in annuals and perennials. Each subsection of that cottage garden can be tilled and planted as feasible, but in the meantime, under that bark mulch, Mother Nature will be getting most of the soil amendments all ready.

And all that will be my PT over the next several years-- my activity-level-increaser as we get to know neighbors OUTSIDE in the fresh air!

~S~