Starting from Scratch: What We Have Learned

Ten years ago we started digging and planting on what was a blank slate; the garden journey we are still on is something I very much enjoy sharing with others. It feels a little empty lately though, given the current state of the U.S. But it's what I do, what I know, and how I connect with the world, so I garden on for now.

Two weeks ago I gave a presentation to the Willamette Valley Hardy Plant Group about our journey. Ten years in, we've experimented with a plethora of plant material and techniques to have a resilient garden that requires as little input as two acres can have. The title of my talk was "A Resilient Garden: What's Working Ten Years In". So it is in the spirit of community that I wish to share a glimpse of some of the highlights of that presentation and what we have learned having started from scratch.

The garden on a warm day last summer. This is at the edge of the labyrinth garden, an extremely low water area that we are continuing to expand.

I'll start off with a few "then and now" images I thought would succinctly illustrate the journey. This is the day we first saw our property. In fact, our real estate agent can be seen under the trees as she lets us roam around the property. I saw nothing but possibilities this fine September day.

The same view ten years in. This image is from this past summer, September I believe, and is filled with drought-adapted plants and lots of gravel mulch. It's pretty self sufficient at this stage and a lot more fun to look at than field grass. It is rarely if ever irrigated in summer and when it is, I do it by hand - there is no irrigation system, just me and a hose.

The same area looking in the opposite direction clearly shows the then labyrinth (now dismantled, of course).

This is what the labyrinth looks like today, essentially the same view as the previous image. The labyrinth, when we started dismantling it, was rocks, then a layer of about 10" of sand, then landscape fabric (the WORST), then dead soil under that. It took several days to remove it all then we got to work adding heaps and heaps of compost to bring the soil back to life. Over the years we kept adding plants and compost, though now it's pretty much left alone.

This is the edge of the berm garden showing the end of the retaining wall.

This is what it looks like now, though the prostrate rosemary plants hanging down the edge of the retaining wall are gone, having rotted with poor drainage. The rest looks pretty much the same. This is a notoriously difficult area to garden in as it's super wet, saturated soil in winter and rock hard dry soil in summer with questionable drainage, though I have taken measures to improve it over the years with crushed gravel and compost.

This was taken November 2015, just after we got keys to our home.

This is what that same area looks like today, taken spring of 2025. There are a lot of Hebe (Veronica) ssp., Amsonia hubrichtii, creeping thyme, Arctostaphylos ssp. and more in here, all of which are tolerant of summer dry and winter wet conditions.

The northern edge of our property showing what would eventually become our shade garden.

This is what it looks like today. There are still a lot of the Douglas fir trees planted a few generations ago, though about half were removed as they were planted too closely together. This area is especially dry due to the vast root system of the Doug fir trees. Any moisture is absorbed quickly - even in winter it can be somewhat dry. What I have now is a distilled plant palette that can handle these dry conditions. Oxalis oregana, Polystichum munitum, Sarcococca ssp. Mahonia ssp. and more are among the repeats in this shade garden.

That is a quick snapshot of a few areas and what transitions they have made in ten years. There are many plants that we tried but that were not adapted to our conditions and so died, and as cool as they were or as much as it pains me, I won't replace them any more with the same plant if it wasn't happy in the first place. We don't have a fancy garden, we actually have a lot of very practical plants with a few goodies that are surprisingly resilient thrown in (Grevillea, Schefflera, Pittosporum ssp. for example).

How did we do it? This is a question we are frequently sked. We started by getting things in the ground right away despite not having garden beds formally laid out. We just started and were willing to keep working on it, allowing ideas to float into focus and taking steps to implement our developing vision, connecting garden areas to make a whole, continue to improve the soil and observe what was happy and repeat. Knowing what a plant wants and where it comes from in the world answered a lot of my questions about where to put any given plant.

In the presentation, I went into some detail about what has not worked and what has. I won't cover everything in this post but here are the basic points:

What has not worked:

-Replacing plants that have died with the exact same plant

-Not understanding a plant’s requirements and origins (summer water loving plant in a dry garden won't be successful, for example)

-Not appreciating aggressive nature of some plants (inherited Alchemilla mollis, for example, very aggressive in my garden)

-Underestimating ultimate size of plants (if it says 10', I can count on it being 12'...so I plant accordingly so as not to have to prune to keep it artificially smaller than it wants to be)

-High-maintenance plants with big summer water requirements (Hydrangea macrophylla, for example)

-Moving plants after they are established can be tricky (plant it where it will be happy and left to be)

-Not covering soil (this invites weeds and evaporation)

-Digging/planting in overly wet, heavy soil (compromises soil structure)

-Disturbing soil unnecessarily, bringing up weed seeds (tilling the veggie garden, for example)

What is working:

-Using drought-adapted plants that also are adapted to wet winters (my passion that I cover frequently on this blog)

-Improving soil with organic matter/using crushed gravel for drainage 

-Observe and understand my own garden/soil/aspect/microclimates

-Gardening with a light touch - no pesticides or herbicides, very little if any fertilizer (and then only for the veggie garden - such as kelp meal)

-Giving plants a chance by planting and leaving it 

-Repeat plants that are successful (this also has the benefit of visually tying the garden together)

-Plant at best time for any particular plant/cut back perennials late (example, plant agaves in spring and wait until spring to cut back Salvia ssp.)

-Don’t amend planting holes, rather plant in native soil, apply compost on surface (plant roots will stay in a happy hole of compost and not go out into the native soil resulting in a weaker plant)

-Leaving/reusing materials onsite/closed loop (we leave tree limbs/stumps to decompose throughout the garden rather than burning/hauling away, for example)

-Plant with wildlife in mind (you'll attract insects that attract birds and other critters that help keep the whole system balanced)

The top three items on this "What is Working" list are key for us. Soil is a big one and with that, retaining water in soil for eventual summer benefit is key. 

Retaining Water in Soil

-Adding organic matter/mulching/covering soil (mulch can be compost, wood chips, grass clippings, gravel, anything to cover it - but organic material will improve soil structure over time)

-A rain garden (where allowed and practical helps to act as a sink/sponge for water to absorb into soil rather than running off into the street)

-Reduce irrigation loss (water early and late in day, drip irrigation)

-Berms and swales (these act as a larger rain garden sort of . . . same idea as a sink/sponge to keep water from flowing off site)

-Capturing water in winter for later use (rain barrel, cistern, etc.)

Here is a bit of a before and after with berms and swales. This was taken in March of 2017. Our property has a slope to it and felt like water was going into our neighbor's property. We (FM) dug out a swale on the edge of the labyrinth garden and piled it up to create berms. We just started digging and doing it and it's worked all these years later.

Here it is from the opposite direction, gravel added (as a path to walk on) and the berms covered to solarize the now disturbed soil, full of hundreds of years of weed seeds.

After a summer of solarization we added a thick layer of compost and planted it up.

This is about a year in. Notice the rosemary along the edge of the bank.

This is it a year or two ago, the berm planted with Ceanothus gloriosus, a few Arctostaphylos pumila and others. The rosemary along the edge has become a hedge.

This is standing at the low point looking north, the berm is behind me and the hedge has filled in nicely (though that wasn't my original plan, I was hoping it would spill down as prostrate plants are supposed to do). In any event, this whole area is rarely if ever watered. In fact, aside from watering in newly planted material, I can't remember the last time I watered anything down here. It truly is drought-adapted.

But along with keeping water in the soil, sometimes you want to keep it out of the soil. Well, not really but you certainly don't want this. This is Oscar the Agave parryi var. truncata, given to me by my mom. He was super happy in this spot, having been planted on a mound of gravel and in full sun. But, over time on flat ground he grew heavier and settled in, the small mound he was on having been flattened. Rarely do I go to great lengths to save a plant that isn't happy, but Oscar is the exception. Some agaves should be totally hardy for me, and they are if given excellent drainage and the conditions they want. It's the winter wet and rot that will kill them before cold will.

We found an alternate location for him on the other side of the berm/mound where a Ceanothus gloriosus was not happy and I wanted to remove it.

FM dug it out over the course of an afternoon.

With all of the unhappy specimen of Ceanothus gloriosus removed, we applied a heavy layer of crushed gravel, thick enough to suppress weeds (we do have other Ceanothus gloriosus planted in this area and they are totally happy. You can't please 'em all, I suppose). Oscar was put into position in a mix of at least 50% gravel. He's on a slope, on the top of the berm and in full sun, now with extremely excellent drainage, so all we could do was cross our fingers at this point.

This is what he looks like today, having made a full recovery. I have plans later on this winter/early spring to open this area up a little as it's clearly filled in over the past two years. Oscar needs a little breathing room.

So there are two examples from my presentation to illustrate a couple key points we've learned over the years.

For my presentation I also showed a sampling of very resilient plants, a few examples of leaving winter damaged plants where they are to see if they would recover on their own rather than taking them out (which these did - a Phormium tenax and four Olea 'Arbequina), I gave examples of using plants as a living mulch to cover the soil and much more. I think rather than adding all that material here, I'll keep this post on the shorter side as it could get quite lengthy if I outline every single point with images. Rather, this is a quick outline of a presentation recently shared about resiliency in the garden and what we have learned having started from scratch which is really what my whole blog is about.

Earlier this week I didn't know if I had anything to share with you all. With the state of the U.S. these days, it is inevitable that my heart is very heavy. I ask myself if gardening and writing about it is relevant at all. Still, I do it for my mental health and maybe looking at garden photographs and learning about one another's gardening practices is helpful to us all? Not letting them get the best of me and take away gardening, that which I love most in this world (besides my husband and kitties) is critical to me, perhaps to you as well. I am happy to continue sharing if it is. I have the luxury of turning towards green things to reset my mental frame of mind before turning on the news, I know I am fortunate. Should we keep on creating? I believe so, it feels healthy. Do share your thoughts. 

To highlight a positive practice: One thing I am really loving right now is The Analog Life Project by Little Truths Studios. Lori Roberts is a garden friend and an amazing artist who creates cards, stickers and similar items. I buy her cards frequently as they have a charm and a calm that resonates with me. I smother my wheel barrow with her stickers with such sayings as "A World Beyond Algorithms," "Walk Gently Upon This Earth" and "AI Will Steal Your Soul." She was feeling like she wanted to reconnect with an analog life so she created The Analog Life Project where by you can download a packet of ideas, journals, etc. for free and participate as you wish. There are pen pals, a community and inspiration and no real rules. This month she's highlighting a project how to make a phenology wheel. Check it out here. So this, her website, her spirit and this project are something positive in my little world that is totally worth sharing.

OK Garden Friends, that's a wrap for this week at Chickadee Gardens. As always, thank you so much for reading and commenting, we do love hearing from you. Here's to resiliency in us all.