Surprise! A green landscape plan

Sometimes the best things evolve and happen organically. Other times they don't.

Our front yard had evolved organically over the past 5 years that we've been in Humphrey House, almost like a nursery rhyme, "here a plant, there a plant, everywhere a plant plant." And you know what? It wasn't working. In fact, it failed miserably. Even though people tried valiantly to help us, we had no clue about various plant sizes - placing things in a tight bunch, too close to the foundation, putting tall plants in front of short plants, sun plants in shady areas - if there was a list of bad DIY landscape plans, I felt certain we were on that list. Well, all that changed over the weekend as I finally set things straight.

With Jen leaving town for the weekend, I promptly set off to surprise her upon her return, and ripped out the existing hardscape timbers and dug up almost every existing thing in our front yard and put the plants into spare containers. The only thing that survived were the coneflowers Chris from TinyBungalow gave us a few years ago and our weeping cherry tree. This gave me a blank slate, with lots of dead ground to play with.

The plan for our yard started with a goal: Create a sustainable landscape. Great, but what does that mean? Well, a landscape that is more native (adapted) to the local climate - able to withstand Chicago's winters and dry summers without extra care. A garden that doesn't need extra watering beyond the natural rainfall we receive. And a landscape that would be more pervious and help absorb stormwater on-site rather than directing it to the overburdened municipal storm sewers. Additionally, native plants also are more attractive to wildlife providing food and cover for birds, butterflies, etc.

But there were many challenges to meeting this goal:

1. Aesthetics - we wanted something with year-round interest that didn't look like crap.
2. Shade - our parkway has a Norway Maple that provides dense shade - and few hours of sunlight. Most aesthetically pleasing drought-tolerant plants and flowers thrive in full sun.
3. Maintenance - I like the idea of quarterly yard maintenance rather than weekly mowing.
   
4. Budget - always a factor, which meant trying to use many materials we had on-site
5. Size - while not huge compared to many, we are dealing with 2/3 of our front yard, about 400 square feet, which could definitely stretch the budget. We also wanted some good vertical height to transition to the porch.
   

One of the nice things about delaying a landscape plan until July is that you can take advantage of season-end sales, which really helps with #4 above. I visited no less than 5 garden centers and deals ranged from buy 2 get one free to 50% off or more. I even got a 1/2 gallon healthy goldenrod plant for $1 at Lowe's just by asking how low they would go!

Well, it all came together so much better than expected. Once everything was cleared out and placed into extra planting containers, I laid down some flagstone pavers that had been left behind under the back porch by the previous homeowners. With a hardscaped footpath in place, I then played around with arrangements with the existing plants such as evergreen boxwoods, along with some new plants I had picked up. Fortunately some of the local garden centers have a nice distribution line with American Beauties. No, that's not a link to some X-rated site, it's a native plant landscape supplier. Combining this with the selection at the big box stores and our existing plants, I grouped the plants together in odd numbers and got successful results.


So what did we do? Well, using advice from friends as well as a native plant specialist, I selected:

• A chokeberry bush which should get 4-7 feet as an edge near the steps.
• Existing dwarf boxwoods for evergreen interest
• Some wild columbine for spring blooms.
• Coreopsis Route 66 - tickseed that is supposed to tolerate part sun (we'll see)
• A nice red fern so I don't have to wonder where it grows anymore
• Shade-friendly bugbane
• Blue cohush
  
• A sweet bush (yay for shade bloomers!)
• More pretty purple coneflowers
• Our existing joe pye weed
• Our existing Golden Alexander, which hopefully made the transplant
  
• Our existing coral bells
• Blue liriope clumping grass
  
• An evergreen groundcover, winterberry

The hardest thing to find was an ornamental grass that can perform in a part shade environment, on about 4 hours of sun per day. I was careful not to choose Chinese Silver Grass, as that is classified as an invasive plant species in Illinois. But with a bit of help, I was able to locate an ornamental that was actually labeled "Full sun to Part shade", a Miscanthus feather read grass strain called "Karl Foerster". These will be great because the grass dies off and provides a clump of winter interest. And potentially neat colors in the spring and summer. Right now though, there's not much to look at.




While I was working, several neighbors came up and remarked on how improved things look. Of course, anything is better than the dead lawn that was there for for months. I'm not entirely convinced the spacing is "just right" for everything, but we'll keep an eye on the plants and adjust as the year goes by. In the meantime, it's had a truly transformative effect on our home giving it style and a natural prairie setting to our neighborhood.

Are Grass Lawns Overrated?

We've been experimenting with a new thing at our home this summer - a dead lawn! Just look at the wonderful progress we've made on killing off the grass.

But why... Is this the lazyman's approach to "lawn care"? The latest form of a "no-mow" lawn? No, we are in fact prepping the front yard for a sustainable revival of sorts.

While we are a bit lazy on yard maintenance, and I certainly do not like to mow (especially in August when hay fever allergies set in), the real reason for this unique approach is that we are killing the existing turfgrass lawn and rotting it out with compost on top of it, in preparation for a more natural (and drought tolerant) landscape.

We're going to replace this area with plants that have deep root systems that are native or adapted for the natural amount of rainfall Chicago receives. Once established, the landscape should require no extra water, and only occasional seasonal maintenance (as opposed to weekly mowing). Our biggest challenge will be finding plants that perform well given the abundance of shade.

Traditional lawn turfgrass has very shallow root systems (ever see sod?). When wet, the roots lock up preventing extra rainwater from infiltrating into the ground. This creates "ponding" or soggy lawns, and causes excessive stormwater runoff. On the other hand, native plants have deep roots that go down 6 feet or more to tap into the Earth's moisture. These plants grew all over the prairies of Illinois, and as the plants died or were burned off in natural fires, their root systems became deep-rooting fingers of compost. Over decades and eons, these composting roots evolved into some of the best soil and farmland in the United States.

In addition to returning some of this land to its natural sustainable use and using less water, our goal is to give a nice prairie-type of landscape setting for Humphrey House, which should fit well with the arts and crafts feel of the home. Now all we need is a good plan.

Back on the chain gang ...

After several months of (well-deserved) hiatus, we're starting to get ready to focus once again on Humphrey House. We had a gathering over Labor Day weekend, and it turns out some of our friends are itching to get back in the rehabbing action as well. After some lobbying by Mark, he and Jason are set to tackle the failed gutter system this weekend (I'm lobbying for bungee cords attached to their waists) as well as properly installing the rain barrel. My friend Michelle, who recently relocated to Chicago from downstate, volunteered to do some trim painting so we can cross it off our punch list, and her new boyfriend Kevin is a CARPENTER ... he offered up his skills for future projects as well. And since the next main project we're tackling is the kitchen, we're going to be scheduling another Wallbangers Ball probably close to the end of the month or the start of October to remove the wall separating the kitchen and bedroom and join the two spaces into one. We'll have to do some investigating as to how that should happen since it's a supporting wall and will have to be replaced by a header, but at least we know we've got volunteers! As Sara said, "Who the eff doesn't like to smash things once in a while?" :)

For Christmas, Santa Claus brought me these lovely house numbers.
Can't wait to put them on in spring. Now just have to decide where they'll go ...