Garden Inspiration

A few days ago, Husband brought home a number of books for me from the library. Since I have several project areas going, and much to learn, perusing the books has been a wonderful education, as well as very inspiring. The following pictures are all ideas I found in these books that I think will work well in our projects. (I wish I could tell you this is MY garden.)

One of the projects I'll be working on over the next few years involves the bank area. It is steeply sloped, and I'm thinking the most attractive, as well as erosion-controlled idea for this would be to terrace the slope. Likely this will involve approximately 3 terraces, with a set of steps as well. The steps that are currently in place are scary, to say the least. They look like a metal fire escape that you see on the sides of old brick buildings in downtown areas. -- Very steep and rickety-looking. Add to this the fact that they are set at an angle, and it's scarier still. Every time I go down them, I hold my breath. They are anything BUT safe, and there is certainly no visual appeal. So, steps will be my first job to tackle.


I am hoping to harvest most of the rocks from our property, thus the "few years". I cannot harvest them till late fall, due to my recent rampage with poison ivy. -- No repeats, please! So, once the leaves have fallen, I'll be out in the woods with my wheelbarrow, combing for rocks. I want to terrace dry stacked to save a little more money.

The other areas of inspiration I found involve the garden. I was struck (again) with the idea of training vines up posts. This picture shows vegetables and fruits being trained up posts. I like the thought of putting this at one end of a small fenced-in garden on a gravel bed, with a hammock or swing beneath it.And I really liked this design for a fence around a small garden. Again, it would be fairly economical, and would help with animal control, which I suspect will be a problem here in the woods. (We can hear coyotes at night on occasion, and have seen one go through our yard at dusk, although our neighbor's donkey has greatly helped with that. But we have numerous cats around, and have also seen oppossums and raccoons and rabbits. And have I mentioned squirrels?)