This winter we changed out a tired flagstone entrance to my vegetable garden for a beautiful stone terrace using Fossil Creek stone. It turned out to be a terrific upgrade. I hadn’t realized how tired the flagstone was. I had always been challenged with maintaining a green plant material between the stones so it’s never looked great. Jane Sylvester from David and Jane Landscapes noticed the flagstone the first time she visited our property and suggested we consider revamping it. She was absolutely right – what a difference it made!
In addition to the new stone, we placed some metal dividers between the planting area and pathway, and spruced up the pebbles in the pathway. They now crunch under our feet again. Love that sound…
Once the stone was placed, it was time to plant the area around it to soften up the hard edges of the stone. The first thing I did was to talk about plants with Jane, who just helped me another project. She is a master of plant material and I always feel more secure about my plant choices once I’ve gotten buy-in from someone who does this for a living.
Next, I went on a field trip to Van Windens Nursery in Napa to shop around for plant material. I was in search of my palate. I ended up choosing a wonderful combination of plants: camellia japonica ‘Nuccio’s Gem’ and ‘Prima Ballerina’, pieris jamponica ‘Compacta Andromeda’ and ‘Forest Flame, a GORGEOUS could-not-resist Japanese maple ‘Red Dragon’, helleborus ‘Ivory Prince’, astilbe ‘Bridal Veil’ and ‘Maggie Daley’, hakonechloa macra ‘All Gold’, black mondo grass, tassel fern and alchemilla mollis. I also selected a lovely kumquat to plant in a pot, to connect the neighboring fruit trees with my new garden. I assembled them at the nursery and saw my garden come to life.
Monday was the day I had scheduled to plant everything – the only day I had for the next two weeks. So I arrived in Napa at 8am only to realize that we were going to have heavy rain all day – and we did. But the team prevailed and managed to plant everything. Vicki stopped by to see my new garden and enjoyed seeing me completely drenched, but happy working in my garden.
This was the first time I planted an area this large by myself. While I definitely had input and hand holding from Jane – I chose the material and laid it all out. It was a break through for me – to realize that I know more than I give myself credit for. While I’m not a plant expert and probably never will be, I know what I like. If given a wide array of choices as our local nursery does, I can enjoy the process of scanning the possibilities, choosing what I like, asking a lot of questions and learning along the way. And, at the same time, I am grateful to have a professional in my garden and life!
