At the risk of turning this into a bog blog, I am posting one more time about the bog garden.
The river rock arrived yesterday afternoon. We spent four hours spreading it as a rock mulch in between the plants of the bog. Most of these plants will get significantly larger. This will be a very full garden. Some pruning will be necessary.
The men thought I was crazy to want this big rock in the bog. Once they saw it sitting up on its end and showing all the pretty lichen, they were happy. Of course it turned into an engineering problem because they didn't want it to tip over when some child decided to climb on it. I left the men to their own devices with concrete, rebar, and math. That rock is going nowhere.
Here is a picture of the whole thing with my fellow master gardener Ann and Sharon from the extension office. Sharon does a lot of record keeping and general wrangling of our master gardener group.
Here is a view of the bog from the cactus garden.
Ten Bog Gardening NoNo's
1. Select all the plants out of season.
2. Go find good research based bog garden making instructions and ignore them.
3. Make sure there is absolutely no drainage and then wonder why it stinks so bad.
4. Hide from the health inspector who wants you to shut down the mosquito hatchery.
5. Put the flagstone down without putting sand underneath it, pull all the flagstone back out, put down sand, replace flagstone. Two extra steps are absolutely necessary.
6. Set a large rock up on it's side as a trap for climbing children.
7. Put containers with no drainage in the bog to control invasive plants and help with water usage, then be puzzled when the containers float after a rain.
8. Send out an email for a work schedule 12 hours before the actual work begins and then be surprised when nobody shows up to help you.
9. When the bog floods be amazed that you have created a perfect home for crawdads.
10. Answer the question, "Where are you going to put the waterfall?" 300 times.
PS..Ignore the bomb squad. They are not here for you.
So, Debbi, Where ARE you going to put the waterfall? I love the bog gardening posts! Are those gardens open for the public to view? That would be a nice afternoon drive for me to go over there and see them firsthand!
ReplyDeleteLOL! Goodness I needed that giggle! Your bog garden does look beautiful though. I have my own "bog" area next to my pond so I can relate in so many ways.
ReplyDeleteCindy
Nola, this is our outdoor education center. Three of the eight gardens are planted and mostly complete -the rain garden, the bog, and a cactus garden. The remaining gardens will be Texas themed, ornamental and native grasses, square foot, sod grasses with special irrigation, and a butterfly garden. It is a public garden at the corner of 1389 and 34in Kaufman.
ReplyDeleteThanks cindy, I really had no idea what I was getting us into.
ReplyDeleteHi there !!!! many thanks for your comment. To my shame I just don’t get enough time to read many of the great blogs there are around. Your gardening exploits do make me very wistful for my Uk garden and I just love making something from nothing and bringing some green and life to a place. I started my garden from scratch and dug a pond and within a week had frogs and newts just fab ! I have just written a bit of a hot-under-the-collar piece on the blog so needed to take some time off this am to read some blogs about lovely people doing great stuff to keep the world green!..yours included …..
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely bog garden, good idea about the large rock in the center of the bed. Thanks for the 10 No-No's, lol.
ReplyDeleteHi SGP, thanks. I really do enjoy your artwork at pencil and leaf.
ReplyDeleteThanks Raquel. We really made a few mistakes before we got that garden in right.
That looks way cool Aunt Debbi! Thanks for sharing the process. Hey if you didn't make any mistakes it wouldn't be half the fun. --Curmudgeon
ReplyDeleteCurmudgeon, Thankfully everyone, with the exception of the health inspector, had a sense of humor about it all.
ReplyDeleteThis post was really funny! I'm a Hunt County Master Gardener and I could really relate to your list of no-no's.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE the rainwater tank. It looks great. We don't have one of those yet, or a bog garden. Keep up the good work. :)