The blog has been quiet because I have been busy doing other stuff. Namely, (1) reading the Song of Ice and Fire series, and (2) working in the garden. #1 is hard to put down, and #2 feels sort of urgent while the evenings are still light enough for me to work outside after the kids have been put to bed.

I did a first round of planting about a month ago. This weekend we paid Zetas another visit and came home with more bushes.

The garden looks like this:

The red lines mark man-made structures; the light green is for bushes and dark green is for trees.

I think of the garden as consisting of four major parts.

Beginning from the north, the part 1 lies between the house and the crossroads (bounded by the two streets, the stairs up from the street, the house and the driveway). I think of this part as the front garden, the welcome mat. This is the part that I have focused on this summer.

It was quite bare to begin with, even more so than the rest of our garden. There is a young cherry tree, which is probably an accidental child of the larger cherry tree in section 2. At first there was also a birch tree, but since it grew up through the sleepers that make up the border around the garden, we had it taken down. The cherry tree can stay for a while, but we do not need three of them in our garden, so in the long run its days are numbered, too.

Now I’ve planted a number of bushes and shrubs that will hopefully give it some more life in the coming years. Towards the north, near the road and furthest from the house and its shadow, there are the sun-loving bushes: a staghorn sumac (for its hairy looks and autumn colour), a dark-leaved black elder (for some dramatic colour during the summer) and a japanese quince (for its colourful flowers). I’ve loved staghorn sumacs since I was a child – we had a few near the house where I first grew up, as well as at my grandmother’s summer cottage. I like the way they’re hairy and spindly at the same time, and their clusters of fruit as well. The elder and the quince I chose because they manage to both look pretty and be useful – one with its flowers (for elderflower cordial) and the other with its fruit.

Closer to the house I’ve put shrubs that are happy in the shade. There are two dogwoods, one with yellow bark, the other with red, for some winter colour. I’ve also put in a mahonia as a contrast to the dogwoods, and to have something flowering near the front entrance.

These all I chose because they are hardy and easy to care for, and should be able to cope with the heavy clay soil we have. Next to the stairs up from the street I’ve been more daring and planted a Viburnum x bodnantense “Dawn”. It sounds so lovely that I couldn’t resist buying it. I am afraid that it might not be very happy there, both because of the clay soil and because it will be shaded by the large cherry tree, but it’s worth a try.

Part 2 is the woodlands. Here we have a cherry, a whitebeam, and a birch, and shade (and roots) from the neighbour’s horse chestnut and birches. Plus as a bonus there is some ground-dwelling hole-digging animal there, probably some sort of vole. So the ground is poor, dry, shady, and dotted with holes, and nothing much will grow here. This section has its prime time in spring, first because of the bulbs we’ve been planting (mostly crocuses and daffodils of various kinds) and then later again when the cherry flowers.

Part 3 is the kitchen garden. This is the only flat part of the garden. The bedrock is very close to the surface here; the soil depth ranges from zero (where the rock peeks out) to maybe half a meter at most. It gets decent amounts of sun during the morning at least, but in the afternoon it is shaded by the neighbours’ trees. Here we’ve created raised beds out of pallet collars and planted strawberries, a gooseberry bush, rhubarb, and other stuff.

A cherry tree separates the kitchen garden from the last section of the garden. Part 4 will have a more decorative role, similar to part 1, but with a pure summer focus. This is the part we see when we sit in the living room or out on the deck. It is unfortunately quite shady, with the cherry tree, and the neighbours’ trees, and more trees along the fence, and the shadow of the house itself. Currently we have a large philadelphus here, as well as a cypress, and a very small flowerbed around a large rock. I haven’t quite figured out a plan for this part yet.

The lack of plan didn’t stop me from buying some bushes for this part, though. I planted a weigela for some colour, and – because I couldn’t resist it when I saw it – a butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii). I don’t have high hopes for the latter; it probably won’t get enough sun here, but maybe, maybe…

Between part 4 and the road we also have an old root cellar, and between the root cellar and the house lies what we refer to as “the slope of weeds”, a steep slope covered with nettles, greater celandine, bindweed and other nasty stuff. I intend to clear this slope in the next few weeks, and make something pretty out of it later this year, or maybe next.