This week, I took a walk around the gardens and was stunned with awe at the beauty I saw.
You see… one area of the Terraced Gardens, I tried to turn into a wildflower meadow a couple of years back. It didn’t take well and the weeds were out of control. I spent hours back breaking weeding to try to get the invasive grasses out. I prepped the soil and seeded everything and it still didn’t take right. After one year my wildflower meadow looked like this. Rather pathetic don’t you think?
Eventually I had to go a different direction. The bottom half was filled with heavy bark mulch for the paths and our Sali Garden plantings. A Sali Garden is a Willow Tree garden grown for the beauty of the willows and for propagation. I have a section that is a specifically a Rainbow Garden. 7 varieties of Willows each with a different color of wood. All the color of the rainbow. The color shows best on first year wood.
Once fully established, I plant to coppice the willow trees each year. That’s a fancy name for chop them down to the ground each year. They grow pretty darn fast and are creating a nice hedge. Those willows I can sell as cuttings for others, plant in the ground to create new willows or fill in holes in the Hedgerow, or put long rods into the ground and weave living willow structures. I have several ideas of living willow structures I would like to build.
In the top part of the old meadow area, there are a few curly willows in red and yellow. I have pink pussy willows, silver pussy willows and a lovely hedge willow all growing like weeds. But in that top part is still the small circular part of the wildflower meadow right in the middle. The circular bark path, the bench to sit on, and numerous flower and fruit bushes planted in a circle around it. In just 2 short years, both the bushes and the willows have taken off. I planted some perennial sunflowers. There is only one variety that is perennial. They have spread like wildfire to the point that I will have to remove some next year to reclaim my path back.
If you look super close, you might be able to see the bench in the exact same spot as the Before photo. It is hidden pretty well in the sunflowers.
Can you see the bench in the middle? The light was streaming pretty bright from the west when I took the photos but it is there. There are several locations that I am going to start showing the before and after photos so you can really see the progress. It is a good thing to remind myself where I was and where I am now. A good stock of my progress whenever I feel discouraged or start to doubt my folly project. ?
So what do you think? Did you find the bench?
