The Raised Beds

Vegetable garden before and after.

We started with our existing 17-ft by 5-ft raised bed and divided it into four smaller raised beds with a one-foot gap between the beds to allow access for maintaining our future herbs and veg. The frame of our vegetable garden is concrete retaining wall blocks on three sides and the brickwork of our house provides the fourth wall. Therefore, we only had to build six wooden walls within the garden to get our four individual raised beds. We would have liked to use cedar, but couldn’t find any in stock locally, so we went with kiln dried, untreated spruce pine fir lumber. We picked up four 2-in × 6-in × 10-ft pieces, which we had cut into 5-ft long planks (the depth of our veggie bed). My husband then measured out the placement for each raised bed, cleared and leveled the soil so we had room to build 12-in tall walls for the bed sides. He stacked the cut lumber on top of each other (giving us a 12-in tall wall) and used both 18-in and 24-in wooden spikes to stabilize the walls.

We then added around one cubic yard of our topsoil/compost mix into the beds, which already had some topsoil and compost from our gardening efforts last summer. We are both extremely happy with the end result and I think it will address several issues we had with last year’s garden. First, we now have 12 inches of soil to grow vegetables in, which should give us good drainage. This means we won’t have to pot up tomatoes or cucumbers, like we did last year, which required watering multiple times a day late July through September. Hopefully with this new system, the plants will thrive on one watering a day during our hottest months. Second, we have the space between beds to give us complete access to our plants, which will make weeding and maintaining the plants so much easier. Last year, we didn’t give ourselves the right spacing for that and it made weeding and harvesting veg an acrobatic performance. These upgrades should pay off as the growing season picks up.

Hello, Cypress! So long, Cherry!

We also planted two Leyland Cypress trees on the southern edge of our property. There is an existing fence in that area between us and our neighbors, but because we live on a hill and our deck is elevated, neither we nor our neighbors have privacy when we’re all on our decks. Our kitchen window also overlooks their deck, so we wanted to plant some fast-growing trees that would give us all a bit more privacy. As with any screen tree, we’ll need to stay on top of them to keep them from becoming gargantuan monoliths. They were budget friendly at $26 a piece and should provide privacy within two years.

In that same area, we also quite literally pulled down a dying cherry tree. I so wanted that tree to thrive and grow and become this magical lovely tree, but before we bought this house, that tree had been through a lot. The neighbors’ fence fell on it and it just never bounced back. We tried giving it some TLC when we got the house, but 20 months on and it was still a sad sight, so we made the call to remove it. My husband went to grab the saw and while standing there, I pushed on the tree and it moved about six inches, so I shouted, “I don’t think we’ll need the saw.” And, in less than a minute, my husband pushed the tree down. There was next to no root system, which explained why it was in such a poor way. It just never recovered from being uprooted the first time.

I felt so guilty about even thinking of removing that tree. I’ve seen other gardeners talk about the challenge of making peace with removing trees and plants that just aren’t working and while I struggled to do it too, I am so happy we got rid of it. The tree was on its last leg and it just did not make sense to let it go on lingering. Now we have two young healthy trees nearby (though having an even number of trees is going to drive me crazy) and the space just looks so much better. I do like grouping things in odd numbers (which is probably some core rule for planting), but there really isn’t space for another cypress. I’ve had my heart set on a hydrangea and I think that area may be right for one, so we’ll likely plant one there this spring and that will give us a grouping of three large elements together.

Lavender

I adore lavender. We grew both English and French lavender when we lived in England and I was delighted to learn some varieties grow well here in the Virginia tidewater, like Lavandula × intermedia ‘Phenomenal’, which we planted last spring. In fact, we live near a lavender farm (https://www.sweethavenlavender.com/), which we visited during the 2020 blooming season to pick fresh lavender and enjoy lavender lemonade—so refreshing. It was actually one of our first outings after spring lockdown. Anyway, I love the look of lavender rows and wish we had the land to have our own lavender fields, but we don’t. However, we do have a long driveway that gets full sun and enough room along that driveway to grow something, so naturally I thought, “Let’s do a row of lavender along the driveway.” I promptly googled “Lavender by driveways” and was delighted to see it was a thing that people did and it looked nice. We already had eight established plants that we bought in 2020, so we pulled those from other areas and transplanted them along the driveway. Unfortunately, the soil there is heavy clay, so we did have to add topsoil and sand to the mix. While the soil still isn’t perfect, I think it has a good shot because it is on a hillside and gets full sun, so fingers crossed it does well in its new home. We’ll also be adding another four or five plants to finish off the row.

This weekend we’ll be back out in the yard to clear the Apple Tree Bed and start cutting down some diseased Red Tip trees (a popular screen tree that only has about a 20-year lifespan) on the northern edge of our property. But to do that, we need to finish getting chainsaw gear. We have a chainsaw, but it needs a new chain, and my husband needs safety gear. Doing our own tree work for these smaller trees and branches will save us a ton of money (trees are so expensive) and it’s a valuable skill. I don’t know if we’ll be able to get everything in time for our Saturday workday, but we’ve got plenty else to do.

We should also be starting out peas this weekend, which will officially kickoff our growing season. So excited!

Though seriously, I am ashamed to admit that I still haven’t started my seed planting schedule. I did look at my zinnia packets over coffee yesterday morning, but there isn’t an official schedule yet. It is a top priority this week.

A few more notes about what else is happening in our yard before I close this out.

What’s in bloom?

Daffodils, yellow and white crocuses, violas, pansies, and Lenten roses.

What should be in bloom?

Our camellias if the squirrels hadn’t eaten the buds :-/

What else is doing?

Our maple tree is covered in buds (yay!) and our trumpet vine has dozens of new leaves. Our apple tree and cherry tree (not the one we cut down) also have buds. We have shoots on the tulips that we potted in the autumn. I wasn’t sure how they’d do, since the squirrels and birds dug at them all winter, but there are survivors, and some are three inches tall already. I expect to see a jump in growth this week with 70-degree weather on the way.

Alright, all. That’s a wrap from our Williamsburg garden. More to come next Tuesday, March 16^th.

Thanks for reading!

~Kate