Happy Monday GPODers!

We’re starting the week with some fabulous garden inspiration, particularly for new gardeners or anyone having to start from scratch. Kathleen Shelman is giving us a detailed look at how she’s constructing a stunning new meadow garden. From the wild, overgrown yard she started with, to the prepping and planning process, and finally the stages of growth in its first growing season.

My name is Kathleen Shelman, and I am in the process of creating a new garden in Port Townsend, Washington. We are in zone eight, with soil that appears to be a mixture of sand, some loam, and many rocks. After gardening on an acre outside of Portland, Oregon for 37 years, we decided to downsize to a quarter acre lot. Half of the lot will be home and hardscape, but the rest is mine to garden. I loved my previous perennial border, but was ready for a change, so I decided to plant a meadow that would be a mix of my favorite more casual perennials and grasses. My goal was to create a small landscape that would look interesting for at least 9 months of the year and would require little if any staking or editing. My color palette would run to blues and purples with accents of yellow and orange, which I have mainly adhered to, although some of my other favorites have worked their way in. The fall before the big move I took many, many cuttings and divisions so my meadow has been basically free to me. Here is the area, approximately 30 x 30, before we began.

We had previously removed the wild roses which completely covered the yard, and had the ground tilled to a depth of about 18 inches. We also added several truckloads of compost.

Uncharacteristically for me, I made a plan based on structure, color, and bloom time. We marked a grid of 36 inch squares with four plants in each square. There were issues. We found that three rows needed to be deleted, which left me with a bunch of extra plants which I wanted to include somewhere. There was also an unfortunate dump of starts in which about five rows were mixed up. This was in March, so I was not exactly sure what everything was, but knew that I would find out. We would need water since Port Townsend is in a rain shadow even though the climate is cool, so we installed a drip system with 30 rows of 30 foot drip tubing with emitters every 12 inches.

Here is the meadow with everything planted and beginning to grow.

By June, things were taking off. I was surprised by both the size and vigor of almost everything.

Through July, August, and September, there was a succession of bloom. In some cases, I found that plants that had been relatively well-behaved in Oregon had become thugs in the enriched soil. I have had to remove almost all of the asters and most of the sunflowers and boltonias. The Canadian burnet (Sanguisorba canadensis, Zones 3–8) is on probation.

Now in October, the grasses are more visible although I have a surprising number of blooms left. I am attributing the long blooming season for many plants to the relative lack of temperature variation here near the water.

I am looking forward to seeing the meadow with frost and hopefully a little snow. It will all be cut to the ground in February.

This has been a really interesting experience for me and I’m looking forward to the next season when some of my friends that did not choose to bloom this year will be joining the group.

Thank you for sharing your incredible garden transformation, Kathleen! Starting a new garden from scratch can be a daunting endeavor, but you’ve perfectly illustrated what can be achieved in a year with the right right prepping, planning, and experimentation.

If you started a new garden this year and documented the process, we’d love to see it! Follow the directions below to submit your photos.

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