Sunday was a beautiful overcast day, perfect for working out in the garden. After purchasing our annual herbs, which included lots of sweet basil plants, I got to work planting them in the herb garden. The perennial herbs are already well established and the chives are in bloom. Next up was taking accurate measurements to plan for the potager.
Three or four additional raised cedar beds will be added to this area. The space is free of grass, and already mulched which will help lighten the work load later.
Here's a view from the other side. Depending on the final design, we made need to remove the two large yews on the right, as well as our enormous boxwood. Without removing some, or all of these evergreens, we would be limited to an approximate space of 12' wide x 18' long - probably not large enough.
The boxwood is 15' wide and 12' high - definitely in need of a major trimming if it isn't removed. However, I do love cutting fresh boxwood during the holidays for wreaths and decorations so I would truly miss having it on the property. Taking the boxwood and yews out would be a major undertaking so I did get a quote for removing them, along with their roots. I was happy to learn it would be just over $200 and that includes removing all of the brush from the property as well.
Here's a view from the other side of the boxwood. Removing it would open up the view to the potager. We have large windows all along the back of the house, with french doors, so it would be nice to be able to look out on the potager during each season.
Now that I have the measurements, the next step is to draw the existing space so I can begin designing the placement of the beds. I love planning all the details! To help with that, I purchased the above supplies. A moleskin large squared notebook for taking notes from all of the gardening books I'm reading and for jotting down or sketching inspirations. I also picked up large graph paper to draw the existing space to scale, including the herb garden and shrubs. Finally, tracing paper. With this I can sketch different designs on the tracing paper and just lay it on top of the design of the existing scaled drawing. This way I don't have to redraw the existing space each time I try a different design or later when determining plant placement.
The above photo is currently the cover of my garden board on Pinterest. You may recognize it as the potager from the movie "It's Complicated". Loved that movie set! If you keep a gardening board on Pinterest too, please leave me a link. I'd love to see all of your pins. In the meantime, I'll be busy with my sketching.
