Change of Plans: We're renovating the garden

Oh friends, our garden here on the acre has been a journey. We moved to this property two summer ago, entering now into our third and we purchased a beautiful acre, in need of love. A half acre back sits the garden. On your way there a unkempt flower bed (We call it the ‘prairie’) filled with lilies, butterfly weed, lilacs, milkweed, bee balm, irises, and a large rhubarb patch–it is a wild and beautiful space. A small trail weaves between the lilies and milkweed and opens up to a small orchard. Three beautiful apple trees surround the garden, two large and sprawling and one young and just beginning. Walking past the youngest tree–a young honeycrisp that produced the first year we arrived–leads you right to the garden. To the left of the garden entrance stands a linden tree–its blooms are intoxicating in mid-summer, and make the most delicious tea. Turn right, and you find yourself in the garden.

When we arrived, the dilapidated garden fence barely contained the wild interior. The garden had been built from bits and pieces they could re-purpose–my favorite was the tomatoes trellised with old hockey sticks. The ground was lined with old plastic soil bags, and a majority of the garden was full of long grasses. As we scanned the space and pulled back the refuse, the treasures hidden beneath began to reveal themselves. My favorite movie as a child was the Secret Garden, and the moment they pull away the dried and dead leaves to reveal the beauty beneath captures this moment so well. We uncovered a thick asparagus patch, a large strawberry bed and three tall blueberry bushes. The bones of something really special was here, and we couldn’t wait to make it our own.

That first year we added a new fence and front gate, cleared out all of the weeds and grasses and mulched. We added a pumpkin arch at the back, creating a log floor beneath for picnics, dinners and morning coffee sits. That first year the garden grew beautifully, so much was so lush and full. But something unsettling kept the garden from truly flourishing…

We had a thief

One morning I headed out to the garden, excited to check on the progress of my red onions. They had begun to bulb, possibly swelling into the largest onions I would ever grow. I opened the gate, stepped inside and froze. An onion was gone. It had vanished. I searched the ground for a sign of a struggle, the tops strewn about or a root fragment or two. Nothing. Just a small indentation where the onion had been. My mind went to the unthinkable first–could this been a person? Did someone need an onion and shopped the convenient backyard grocer? That’s ridiculous, I told myself.

The next day another onion disappeared. My suspicion grew. Then nothing for a while, and I calmed a bit, thinking the onion-jewel thief had maybe had their fill.

A few weeks later in the middle of my work day (I work remote most days–oh the hybrid life) I took my lunch break in the garden. Sitting on a log munching on my lunch gazing out over the growing garden, I heard a rustling. A funny, whooshing, rustle. Frozen mid bite I watched as an entire snap pea plant slowly sucked down into the earth. Its tendrils and arms outstretched, then squished and squeezed through a tiny hole in the earth. Feeling like I was suddenly in a Bugs Bunny episode, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I ran to the bed and found four tiny holes neatly in a row, pea plants vanished beneath the soil. I did feel a pang of embarrassment that I thought we had a human pest, when if fact I was being hoodwinked by an underground menace.

Voles. Voles are destructive and impossible to get rid of, and did a number on the garden that season and the following year. In a panic to save some plants and enjoy a harvest, we added a few raised beds, lining the bottom with mesh. It got us through a second season, but our garden was in desperate need of re-enforcement against the under dwellers.

This winter and early spring went deep into researching the very best beds for our needs and I landed on Birdie’s Raised Beds. I have several existing raised beds around the property, and nothing is as sturdy or at beautiful as Birdie’s Beds. I set to drawing up a garden plan–I did this digitally, but if I had done it by hand there would be a giant pile of wadded up paper where I worked and re-worked the space.

We ended up expanding the garden by seven feet, and planned to add six 4’x8’x15” raised beds in the beautiful slate gray color. Final sketch drawn, we set to readying the space for the new beds.

This was a crazy amount of work. We had to re-mulch, map out where the new beds would sit, lay wire mesh across the whole area, move existing beds that were filled with dirt and over wintered garlic.

The day the beds arrived was a joyful one. I may have jumped up and down with glee as the Fedex carrier pulled up in front of our house. Over the next week, we spent every extra hour assembling and filling our new beds. As each frame settled into place, and baby plants were tucked into new soil, the space began to feel like home.

The updated garden has now had a solid month and a half to grow and is filling in beautifully. When you open the garden gate, the first two beds greet you with white and orange marigolds, and tiny nasturtiums. The center beds are connected by an arch where the watermelon and cucumber vines are climbing up the trellis and out of the beds, trailing into the path, tiny tendrils outstretched. The last bed to the left has three leafy cabbages sitting tall at the end before you sit beneath the pumpkin arch. We have one more bed to build later this summer once the strawberries are done fruiting, for now we enjoy the five and the full and beautiful harvests they will give us, far from the grasp of tiny vole paws.

Below is my final garden plan with every plant detail–I am learning from other Substack gardeners ( thank you Melina Hammer, Beccalynne | Grow With Me ) on how densely you can plant a raised bed. I am interplanting with beets, carrots, watermelon radishes and florals, to help hold soil moisture, increase harvests and invite pollinators.

I hope you enjoyed my saga and final reveal–I am excited to continue to share updates across the rest of the growing season. If you are looking at doing your own garden updates, I highly recommend Birdie’s Beds.