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hendi_alex
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Posts: 3604
Joined: Sun Jul 06, 2008 7:58 am
Location: Central Sand Hills South Carolina

An imperfect solution to a difficult location - short video

This wouldn't the everyone's cup of tea. But it does work for the wife and me. I tried for years to get perennials to grow in the area, but the oak trees just suck the life from the soil, and make it nearly impossible to keep a bed watered. So I just opted for the 'nursery' look. I placed landscape fabric down, to keep the tree roots from growing into the containers. Then mulched with the oak leaves. We are doing the best we can to get a reasonbly presentable area, where the plants are easy to tend and such that we can get a lot of color on that side of our home.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/aghenderson/4535078342/

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applestar
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Posts: 30551
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

Hmm. I've an idea for you since you have no lack of is logs, stumps, sand, and or leaves. See what you think:

Our kids' playground equipment slide has a landing sandpit area that is made of an roughly circular area lined with light-gray weed block, surrounded by large logs on their sides and big upright stumps, and filled with play sand. The stumps are of varying diameters and heights, allowing the kids to walk on them or sit on them or use them as tables. The effect works very well but the variety is purely due to whatever material we could find on the curb after people have chopped down their trees.

You could similarly mark off an area with logs, but with more intentional design -- uniform or undulating height? upright-horizontal pattern? Same species logs? Then fill with either sand or with leaves to bury the nursery pots. You could easily rearrange the potted plants to suit your whim as they grow, flowers bloom or fade -- maintain separate nursery area for replacement plants etc.



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