A promise yet to be fulfilled [01/25]

I’m Nathan Langley and this is A promise yet to be fulfilled, a seasonal weekly newsletter on my garden developments at home in Sudbury, Ontario!

With the spring rush past us for another year, I have been working on preparing an area in my front yard for a trial garden. I don’t have any plans to share for the trial garden yet, as I’m about 30% finished turning over the soil and removing the volunteer plants currently growing there (it was an old veggie garden bed now fallow).

But I have also been working on a bit of a buffer garden along the side of the trial garden area that faces my driveway. The trial garden is going to look a little odd from the main road and my driveway, so I thought it would be a good excuse to utilize some of the perennials from my store to create a dense border between the two spaces.

The prep work has been a bit on the slow side for my liking, as there are numerous birch roots to work between. The soil is also not great. Lots of rocks and sand — not much organic matter.

Since I am impatient (I don’t want to wait the two weeks it will take to have garden mix soil delivered) I decided to lean into the poor soil and utilize perennials that should be able to grow in those conditions.

As you can see from the plan, the buffer garden is largely two repeating blocks.

Behind the birch trees are:

Aster dumosus ‘Wood’s Light Blue’ (‘Wood’s Light Blue’ New York Aster)
Monarda fistulosa (Wild Bergamot)
Nepeta faasenii ‘Walker’s Low’ (‘Walker’s Low’ Catmint)

Between the birch trees are:

Andropogon gerardii ‘Blackhawks’ (‘Blackhawks’ Big Blue Stem)
Deschampsia cespitosa ‘Gold Dew’ (‘Gold Dew’ Tufted Hair Grass)
Deschampsia cespitosa ‘Gold Veil’ (‘Gold Veil’ Tufted Hair Grass)
Echinacea pallida (Pale Purple Coneflower)

The two Deschampsia cultivars alternate, as I would like to see what their differences are in greater detail once they have established.

I have stopped next to the old well cap, as I am not 100% set on what I have drawn in my plan for that section. I don’t have all the plants needed on site, for one, and I should probably use the opportunity to trial some of the other grasses I brought in this year.

I still need to plant some asters in front of the birch trees too, but otherwise the perennials are in the ground!

For the week ahead, I will continue to work the soil in the trial garden area and will do some measurements so that I can start getting some ideas down on paper. I’m not sure how I am going to organize the trial garden, or if I should try to organize it at all. Maybe it will be more of a fluid space of perennials instead of a strict botanical library?

I’ll also try to pin down some more ideas for around the well cap while I work on preparing that area for planting.