What I think of as my garden is in our ‘backyard’. We have a double city lot with a 40’ by 80’, one hundred year-old warehouse in the Southeastern corner. It is forty feet from the back of the warehouse to the Eastern boundry and the lot is 100’ wide. That swath of land is where I have been gardening longest, about 13 years. To get to my garden you enter through the paver driveway, under a large Black Mission fig tree and pass first under or to the left of the upstairs deck/car port and then between the oldest deck and gazebo on your left and the newest deck and enclosure around the hot tub against the building on the right leading to the gate to my garden. Inside, my garden is divided into three major areas with a couple of minor subdivisions.

When you first come through the gate you enter what I am calling the Gravel Entry Garden. I think of it as a mediterrainean garden and there is a large open area covered in gravel in its center. Immediately infront of you upon entering is a large cresent shaped island bed oriented toward the sun which gets full sun all day, all year. This is the area I give the most regular water to and is the first bed I developed here. Its about 40 feet long and as much as 12 or 15 feet wide in the center.

Looking to your left there is an old ‘greenhouse’ infront of an even older shed. If you turned toward the greenhouse, a large blue fountain would be on your left near the fence we just went through. If you continued toward the green house you’d pass under an arch leading to the “Circle Lawn Garden”, a shade structure, storage shed, a repurposed area where I used to keep a couple of outdoor aviaries and a small corner deck overlooking Strawberry Creek.

If instead you’d turned right upon entering you’d see a small raised bed containing a Coral Bark Japanese maple tree, a fuschia, some bromeliads and a young Luculia tree. Near it are a couple of blue adirondack chairs. This direction leads to the warehouse’s backdoor and the area behind the warehouse that I’m calling the “Pond Amphitheatre”. This is basically a 3 to 4 foot wide path which makes a loop around a little 8 foot diameter pond in the center of the area. Separating the Pond Amphitheatre and the Gravel Entry Garden is a smallish area I call the “Broken Concrete Courtyard” which extends from the back door to another arch which separates the old cresent shaped bed from a dry island bed which I don’t irrigate. The loop around the pond can be completed through the arch or continue along the back path to the circular lawn and the corner deck. Beyond the center arch the back path widens out in an area I call “The Y”. Here there is a glider bench under a persimmon tree facing the Eastern end of the Cresent Island bed.

Welcome.