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Planting Under Trees - Part 8

© Marge Talt

From The Very Beginning

 In this series of articles about planting in the dry, rooty conditions under mature deciduous trees, I've told you about beds and borders that have been in place for over fifteen years. Now, I'll tell you about one that I started planting about five years ago in my USDA zone 7 garden.

 Actually, the whole project began eight years ago, when we made an addition to our house. A group of trees - a large oak (Quercus) and four dogwoods (Cornus florida) - who had been at the very edge of the woodland, ended up in an area we call our "walled garden". This garden doesn't really have "walls", although the house walls are on one side and the wall supporting the covered walk is on another. Bordering the drive, we've installed a series of cedar posts with connecting beams. The plan is that openings are to be filled with lattice one day. I'm not holding my breath for this day to arrive, but the posts do form a visual indication of enclosure. The project is far from finished, but a bit more gets done every year, and I'll tell you about other parts of it another time.

 I thought it might be of some interest for you to see this one area as it progressed. Once again, this page may be slow to load for many of you because of the photos - so please be patient.

 Here you can see the tree grouping right after building construction was done. Behind the trees, the gray line is the gravel drive, curving down to the garage and beyond that is a lovely big pile of woodchips at the edge of the woods. This pile of chips has since been used; the balance, nicely rotted, has been spread and a new woodland garden started there last year. Of course, before anything that I wanted to do could be started, the huge pile of stones left over from construction had to be moved. That took a while and a lot of perspiration.

 The following year we finally got the rocks out of the way, and had a trench dug by a couple of strong guys (the ground was rock hard and more than I could handle). Black plastic perforated drain pipe was installed in the trench to carry water from what would become the upper terrace. This gives you an idea of the soil - good old orange Maryland clay with veins of shale, which are the devil to dig through. Tree roots lace the entire area. You can see how we jogged the trench to keep it as far away from the trees as we could.

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