The
Parker Family Garden

Our Garden Journal

Our Property

We live and garden on about 1/3 of an acre, in the rolling hills of western Pennsylvania. Our house is in a 40 year old development in a suburban area, where the soil is mostly clay. Our property has been almost completely regraded and relandscaped since we moved here six years ago, and all of the work has been done by hand.

At the front of the house, we have removed old plants and added several large planting beds to provide interest and privacy from the street. The entire back half of the property has been reclaimed from a forest of black oak and reworked to provide a terraced yard. We still have a way to go toward finishing our basic landscaping plan, but we have added several planting beds, a level area at the top where we plan to put a garden shelter, and two small lawn areas where the kids can play. A steep slope joins the terraced yard to the patio area and the house.

Front Plantings

In the front of the house, we have worked to overcome several challenges. To the west of the driveway, we removed a large tree and added a mounded planting bed. This had the added benefit of covering the exposed roots from the tree that were wreaking havoc with the mower. This bed is in a paisley shape, and includes daylilies, yew, PJM rhododendron, yucca, Rosy Glow barberry, pachysandra, and a sugar maple.

To the east of the driveway, the soil had washed away at the street's edge, leaving the yard dished below the level of the pavement, and a catchall for salt and other runoff from the road. One hundred and fifty wheelbarrow loads later, we have a forty foot long planting bed, which is now higher than street level and softens the steep slope of the front yard. It provides a bit of shade, as well as some acoustical and visual barrier from the street, and has the added benefit of keeping the neighborhood kids from walking a deerpath through the front lawn. This bed includes a hedge of PJM rhododendron, a large forsythia, yucca, yew, Rosy Glow barberry, two sugar maples, daylilies, and a few other perennials. We plan to underplant the trees and shrubs with pachysandra and more perennials this year.

The planting beds at the house foundation are akin to a narrow terrace with a steep slope coming down to meet the lawn. We incorporated new steps to the front porch with ground level lighting, and plants here include a Royal Star magnolia, hollies, PJM rhododendrons, yew, yucca, inkberry, and golden thread cypress. These are underplanted with a ground cover of myrtle, which blooms several times a year.

Rear Plantings

Behind the house, to the north, we have a small yard with a foundation planting of rhododendron and hosta, a brick patio, and a play area where the children have a trampoline. All of this is backed by a 12 foot high sloped planting bed. The slope includes forsythia, maiden grass, sand cherries, spirea, juniper, a snow fountain weeping cherry, pygmy barberry, yucca, azalea, and ferns. Around our main birdfeeder station at the bottom of the path to the upper yard, we have Stella d'Oro daylilies and miniature roses.

Above the slope, we have a larger lawn with a stone retaining wall encircling our butterfly garden, flower beds, and top terrace. On the lawn there is a small black gum tree, which remains from the original woodlands. The butterfly garden includes a birdbath and a large forsythia, a developing variety of plants intended to attract butterflies and hummingbirds, and some plants that are just for fun. The other flower bed includes a large maiden grass, yuccas, PJM rhododendron, daylilies, peonies, and a bleeding heart, and at the top it will be crowned this summer by a frame-and-canvas garden shelter. The raised vegetable beds that used to be there have been removed because of a lack of time to tend to them. A hedge of burning bush edges the west side of the lawn.

Wildlife

Wildlife is abundantly evident here. We have added birdfeeders and birdbaths to encourage the wild birds that we cherish and welcome, including the cardinal, blue jay, tufted titmouse, chickadee, wren, purple finch, goldfinch, hummingbird, mourning dove, and robin. A few butterflies also grace our yard, but we'd like to attract more. We also have resident owls, hawks that like to visit our bird feeders and knock apart our birdbath, and a flock of turkeys that drops by each year. Controlling the impact of some of our other visitors is an ongoing p roject, as the deer, squirrels, and chipmunks are forever inviting themselves to share in our vegetables harvest and prune our lovely flowers....

A Garden of Links