"I'm a lumberjack and it's OK!"
Yesterday was a big gardening day. I usually have about one of
these a month. People think it takes a lot more time to manage
a garden, but, thank goodness, I can keep things in line without
slaving away every weekend. Unlike lawns, trees ands shrubs grow
more slowly and I can put off pruning and other maintenance if
necessary. The major benefit of this is that I don't have to hire
a landscape company to maintain things like most other people
in the neighborhood. Of course, I wonder if an outside company
would have any idea what to do with the menagerie I have inherited
on my property. This is no "mow the lawn and trim the shrubs"
landscaping job.
The focus of this gardening day was "The Great Tree Editing Project."
My wife, Rosanne and I ended up removing 5 trees by ourselves.
A rental chain saw and a little elbow grease left us with a new
sunny spot on a trellis, large tree trunks to be used as landscaping
timbers and a pile of tree limbs that will take several weeks
to load into our garden bins. It is days like this that make me
want to get a chipper/shredder, but they happen so infrequently,
once every 3-4 months, it still doesn’t seem worth the expense.
Then again, the mulch would be nice. So go the gardening decisions
around here.
I call this project "editing" because it reminds me of editing
someone else's writing. You want to maintain the flow and feel
of the original piece while stripping out the excesses and helping
the whole piece grow. Similarly, it does no good to have trees
that are crowding each other out. The trellis has a wonderful
vine, as yet unidentified, that has bloomed only once in the three
years we have lived here. Two Podacarpus trees were trained up through the trellis and shaded it entirely. These
trees would also bang into the side of the house whenever there
was any significant wind. The vines would climb the tree trying
to get any semblance of sunlight. Now they can sprawl nicely without
climbing into trees or onto the house ? and hopefully use all
this new sunlight to bloom
Before & After Pictures
A Carrotwood (Cupaniopsis anacardioides) grew just to the left of the trellis and deepened the shade
even farther. These trees are pretty and evergreen but they can
grow dense so quickly. We have 5-6 left on the property so removing
this one still leaves us with some diversity. Removing a small,
even more dense Ficus (FICUS benjamina) opened another hole in
the canopy.
The final tree, medium-sized and unidentified, was planned for
removal but I was so tired I was going to work on it another day.
It was then that our neighbor, Moses, popped his head over the
fence and mentioned how much he disliked the tree. It tends to
drop a large profusion of berries into his backyard each year.
He was a neighbor to the previous owners and has been very tolerant
of the property line plantings that can sometimes get out of hand.
He offered to help remove the tree so I gladly accepted. This
was, by far, the largest tree of the day and I wanted to shout
"Timber!" as the upper limbs crashed down. The berries made the
limbs extremely heavy and the lack of sunlight had caused extremely
large water sprouts to reach for the sun. Without such nice neighbors
I would have needed to call a professional tree service had the
tree grown much larger.
Making the garden mine
Finally, after 3 years I am just starting to feel that this garden
is mine. It takes much longer than I ever thought to settle in.
Re-plant a flowerbed there. Remove a few trees. Eventually things
begin to take on your character. The garden wall I made out of
a recycled concrete patio; the new garden bench I bought Rosanne
for Christmas; the first garden party. It all adds up. Each day
the previous Japanese garden theme fades into a more rustic, Southern
Californian garden. Now that I have more sunlight in a few areas
I am thinking of trying a few more California native plants.
Another major addition to the garden will be a play structure
for Joseph. He is getting old enough that he likes to climb and
slide. Since we can't make it to the park each day I want to give
him his own place to play. I think the profusion of trees in the
back garden will actually help with this project. A play structure
that is only 5 feet off the ground would be surrounded by trees
and feel like a much taller tree house. I remember a tree house
that friends had back in Ohio when I was growing up. Since the
trees were not mature enough to support the actual structure they
built something akin to a small fire lookout among them. In the
summer you were entirely surrounded by foliage and felt as if
you could be in the middle of a large forest instead of a small,
planted grove. It was even possible to use the trees as sliding
poles to the ground. What fun! Hopefully Joseph will have just
as much fun.
Keep Digging!
Douglas
Douglas E. Welch is a freelance writer and comptuer consultant
based in Van Nuys, California.
He can be reached at douglas@welchwrite.com or via his web pages at www.welchwrite.com.
A Gardener's Notebook: