Introducing Our garden

Since this is my first post here, I'd like to lay the blame for this blog squarely at the feet of my niece Meg!  If you like it, I'll take the praise. If you don't, it's all Meg's fault!

Our home is a single family house in a city neighborhood of row homes. The main part of the structure was built in 1860 according to our deed. An addition was added in the late 1940's or early 1950's. The lot is typical of the city, measuring  22 feet wide and 150 feet deep.

When we bought our house, it had two double car garages with a large concrete/ macadam desert in between them. They were constructed of concrete block in the mid 1920's and had large, very heavy wooden doors.  The garages and lot consumed most of the space behind the house, leaving only 100 or so square feet of backyard.  We missed having any meaningful outdoor area with some garden space. In addition, the garages were built for Model T Fords and were inadequate for modern cars. The previous owner had rented out the garages for storage. After several years, we gave notice to the renter of the garages closest to the house to move out. Very conveniently, the garage had an entry door that opened to our small yard. Over that summer, I tore off the roof and removed the garage doors. I replaced the doors with an eight foot wall. We put brick in over the floor, built an 8' x 20' deck, and constructed boxes along 3 walls as raised flower beds. We called it the "courtyard".

Several years later, we decided that we really wanted a garden so we could grow fresh vegetables.....Lois is a vegetarian, after all. We had the second pair of garages vacated and erected a 6' high fence linking the two garages and macadam area into one large space. After demolishing the roof and doors, we had a blank slate to create our garden. We opened a doorway from the courtyard into the new area. Boxes for the beds were constructed using 6"x6" lumber. The lane next to the garden is too narrow for a truck to bring in the soil we needed, so we bought and carried in by hand 40 pound bags of topsoil. The total came to over 12,500 pounds of soil! Then many bags of pine bark mulch were spread to cover the walking areas. The drawing above shows you the layout as it is now. The photo shows how it appeared from the rear deck several years ago. Changes have occurred - for instance, near the wall, the black raspberries have been removed and the bed is now used for vegetables.

So much for the history lesson!  I'll be back soon with a view of what I've been doing in the garden in February, 2011!