Roserobin's New Garden

Spring and Summer 2002

Golden Celebration

When we had to sell our home and move my garden unexpectedly last fall, I was eager to reestablish a new garden.  I potted up about 80 roses and various perrenials which sat in pots until early April when we began to make a new garden.  I am pleased with how quickly we were able to re-establish a new garden and wanted to share how it was done.  

The backyard as it was in January when we moved into the house. View from back of yard looking toward house and from the deck looking back.

Here is how we built the garden. The soil is clay and was quite soggy that time of year, so we decided to build up the beds with compost and plant into that, using a modified version of the lasagna method.  We bought 20 yards of compost and got large pieces of cardboard from appliance boxes and lay them directly over the sod where we wanted to plant.  We cut holes in the cardboard with a utility knife directly through the cardboard, removed the sod in the circle and amended the soil in the hole with compost, bone meal and manure.

We planted the roses and then piled compost around and covered the cardboard to a depth of about 8-12 inches. No back breaking removal of sod.  Almost no weeding.  All roses survived move and most are flourishing.

Here is the centre mandala bed showing the edge of the cardboard covered with compost, early April 02.