EricaceaeValentine's Vaccinium Explosion garden

This is a sunny section of the yard, with eastern and southern exposure. I removed the old lawn/periwinkle/weedy mess by taking off all the turf down to about 6 inches. This had the miraculous effect of removing all the roots and seeds which would typically give rise to the whole litany of weeds and invasives specializing in bare soil. I brought in a lot of 3 way soil blend and started adding plants. Early on, I had a vision of this being an edible garden with kind of an alpine feel. I love the montane and subalpine plant communities we have in Oregon, as well as the shore pine/huckleberry/rhododendron areas of the coast. These communities have a lot of plants in common, as well as a similar, overgrown Japanese garden feel. I placed some rocks and boulders throughout the planting to create a sense of natural terrain, as well as creating little planting pockets for smaller areas of focus. I started with some blueberries, evergreen huckleberries, salal, coastal strawberries and western azalea. I started realizing that many of these plants were in the ericaceae or heath family and the more I planted, the more I loved them. I narrowed my focus to include as many ericaceae as I could stuff in, still with a mind to edible fruit. Now there are tiny Himalayan blueberries, low bush and high bush blueberries, eastern wintergreen, mountain huckleberries, lingonberries, our native bog cranberry as well as a larger-fruited variety (these reside in a little bog garden I created out of a submerged plastic concrete mixing tub with very limited drainage). In addition to the ericaceaes, I’ve planted some perennial flowers (gentian, red and yellow monkey flower, Japanese iris, yellow-eyed grass, blue-eyed grass, violets, small leaved montia, bog orchid, meadow foam, meadow rue, etc, etc), sword ferns, succulents (several sedum and bitter root) and many others. It’s on its third year now and starting to really fill in. Some of the ericaceae are very slow growing, so I think it’s a space that will look better and better as time goes by. I amended plantings with peat moss and doug fir shavings from my remodeled house, which adds a lot of acidity to these acid-loving plants. Because of the lack of weed seeds and plant density, I don’t have much weeding to do here, which is a relief because I have a big yard. In the hot part of the year, this area requires one or two deep waterings a week. My 2 and 3 year kids LOVE this part of the garden because there’s often something tasty to eat.