Herb Garden Glowup

My vision of a profusion of fat cabbage roses, kitchen and medicinal herbs, and plants spilling out everywhere!

When The Fixer and I moved to this property over 10 years ago, I needed gardens fast. Moving households for me has always meant moving plants.

The number had grown over the years, and I had plastic bins and trashcans full of roses, irises, peonies, and other cherished passalong plants. I even had a trash can full of asparagus crowns! The lot we were moving to was 1.5 acres of woods with no garden beds at all. It didn’t even have a lawn.

I went to work building an herb garden that could do double duty as a holding nursery for the transplants. I’d always dreamed of a potager, or kitchen garden and in fact, had the design in my head.

Inspired by a cross-stitch pattern I’d done as a newlywed, it would be a semi-formal quadrant of beds with the paths forming a cross and a lovely fountain or bird bath in the center.

You are my rock and my foundation, but you’re no good for herb gardens

At first, I was thrilled to find rocks on the property. They were big enough sandstone rocks to use as native hardscaping to outline the quadrants. The more I excavated and lovingly formed the rock borders, the quicker I realized I was building the herb garden on a bed of rocks.

Immoveable rocks.

My new beds became defined by the boulders I ran into. But at this point, I just needed a place to park some plants, so I made the haphazard shape work. I was running out of time as my uprooted plants waited for their new home. There were still four sections, they just weren’t as geometrically pleasing as my cross-stitched garden.

I shoveled decomposed granite in for my paths. There wasn’t room in the center for my birdbath, so the focal point was nixed.

That first installment to my gardening paradise was also my arthritis debut! I’m sure arthritis had begun before, but I was now face to face with a future of gardening with arthritis and the drastic changes it would bring.

My Favorite Mistake

There were three major problems that had to be considered for the redo:

Difficult water access
Too much shade
Slope

*Miles of hose attached to temporary hose bib*

No hose bib was available on this side of the yard, so we ran an old hose from the closest water bib (on the far side of the garage) to a post. The Fixer put a spigot on the post which got the water closer, but, meant turning it on and off at the post and at the original hose bib, which was leaky. There were many times I turned the herb garden faucet off but forgot to turn the garage one off. The leaky faucet cost a lot of money and wasted water!

I designed the area based on what I wanted, not what my plants needed, and as a result, trees shaded most of the beds. My roses were spindly and prone to disease from lack of sun.

What it came down to was my paths were in the sun and my beds were in the shade. After 10 years of wishing it weren’t so, my patience ran out. Unfortunately, there was no budget to pay for a major herb garden reno.

How was I going to DIY this renovation with my arthritis? Trying to move boulders didn’t do anything to improve my limited gardening abilities! And was this job really a renovation? Because it seemed like a complete tear-down.

Not having the labor capacity or budget for a complete tear-down, I decided on a makeover. The easiest way to give this garden a proper glow up would be to pay someone to do it, but I don’t have that kind of gardening budget so I needed to get more creative with my solution.

Fast forward to this spring and the transformation’s complete! Here’s how I did it.

Step One – Water

A water line had to be installed. The bid from the plumber to run the line and install a faucet was $6,000. Wow! I understood why it would be so expensive, but I didn’t have that to spend.

No Zombie Apocalypse Here!

The Fixer to the rescue! The plumber needed to hand dig the line because of all the rock, but The Fixer tells me it’s because he has a professional requirement to dig 6-12″ below grade level (the lower you go, the more rock you hit). We could make it shallower because, as he says, in our zone 8 climate, if the ground ever freezes to 6” the zombie apocalypse would be a bigger concern than gardening.

The Fixer rented a trencher and he did have to stop and manually bust up rock in a few places, but it turned out to be much less of a hassle than we thought, and the pipe is at least 6” deep. The trenching and line installation was completed in one weekend.

The Fixer installed a cedar post with a shelf and decorative trim to match our existing structures. Next, he mounted a Hoselink automatic hose reel. This retractable hose reel is an integral part of all my gardens. When you’re gardening with arthritis, reducing the workload on your joints is a key to success. The Hoselink automatic hose reel does the hard work for you and looks great!

The herb garden is about 60 feet long by 50 feet wide. The 82’ hose reel covers that easily and because of its swivel design, I’m also able to water an area in the opposite direction that was hard to reach before. Easily accessible watering is critical, especially in gardens that are just getting established. Those young roots can dry out quickly and if it’s too hard to water, you’re doomed to failure.

Adding a dedicated hose bib was a huge piece of the herb garden renovation. No more turning the water on and off at two separate locations. No more winding up heavy hoses at the end of a long day of watering beds. No more unsightly hose lying on the ground! And the Hoselink looks beautiful in the new space.

The Fixer will eventually put microsprinklers in place but as long as I have my Hoselink hose reel I’m in no hurry to get those installed.

Flipping Garden Beds and Paths

The second major problem was threefold: shade, rocks, and slope. I had to figure out how to flip my beds to take advantage of the limited sun. Taking out old growth trees was not an option, so we trimmed them. But how was I going to move the paths? Arthritis severely limits my ability to dig, transplant, and haul dirt. This mental challenge prevented me from doing anything years sooner. How could I re-design these beds in a way that uses little manual labor?

I wanted to use the rocks I’d already excavated, but they would have to be moved to form the new beds. I’d already learned the hard way that moving large rocks and arthritis aren’t compatible!

The Fixer had already done so much for this project, I wanted to stay in his good graces and not make my project his to-do list.

My solution needed to be both affordable and as labor-free as possible.

Slope was another problem. It wasn’t huge, but I could see where the design was calling for tiers rather than a central pathway. Terracing usually means a lot of back-breaking dirt hauling. If I could make banded tiers that ran east and west, they would take the place of where the two paths had crossed before. This area had the most sunlight hours available.

An Edgy Solution

I stumbled on the solution – Cor-Ten steel edging. This steel edging comes in 4’ lengths and various heights. This edging is bendable and super easy to install. I ordered a box of 6″ tall sections to see how it would work. The depth allowed me to fill the beds creating a terraced effect. It was perfect!

Using the steel edging running east and west, I was able to leave a lot of my north/south rocks in place. This saved me labor while creating the look I wanted.

The edging was hammered in and stakes placed at the junctions. The Fixer noticed that since we weren’t butting up against a building, the exposed steel ends against the rocks could create a toe-stubbing hazard for me and the grandkids. He came up with a genius solution!

They don’t call him The Fixer for nothing!

He bought a $30 rock-cutting blade for his Skilsaw and made a cut in the rock that the steel end nestles right into. It’s a nice, finished look, and no stubbed toes!

Flexible and easy to install, corten steel edging allowed me to tier the beds

How to fill beds without purchasing and moving soil

Water and terraced beds in place, my garden vision was shaping up. My next hurdle was how to fill those beds with soil without breaking my back or the budget.

I stared at these beds for days contemplating how to build rich soil without bringing it in from an outside source. The old paths still had the decomposed granite. I decided it didn’t need to be moved, if anything, it would add minerals and tilth to the new soil. I know if I’d paid a landscape company to create the beds, they would’ve brought in compost and soil and tilled it into the rock layer.

I considered purchasing a load of soil, but I’d still have the chore of shoveling it into the beds. Soil is heavy! This is not a feasible solution with arthritis.

I finally realized the solution was right in front of me! I’d been collecting shredded leaves in Geobins for over a year. I had six of them and they were full of leaf mold. Leaf mold is a great soil conditioner and provides habitat for earthworms and beneficial organisms. It doesn’t have much nutrition, but it was just what I needed to fill in the tiers and let them create beautiful soil, with no labor required from me.

The roses were the primary plants being moved to the new area. I dug holes amended with compost and good soil to transplant the roses and filled in the rest with the leaf mold. I added leaf mold to the existing beds to refresh the soil since I’d never amended any of this soil. Each year, I’ll top them off with more leaf mold, which is something I have in abundance on my treed property!

Make the Mulch Of It

My next big decision was what material to use on the paths: Mulch or decomposed granite (DG) as I had before. I love the DG paths. They create a nice solid surface to walk on and look good, but they’re expensive in time and labor. They need to be refreshed with more DG annually and the weeds still grow right through. Shoveling DG and carting it over is simply off the table for me.

I considered renting a skid steer to help with that chore, but again, the cost was high and the area is not very accessible for heavy equipment. I knew I could get my local tree service to bring piles of mulch. And it’s free! I still had to provide the labor, but mulch is much lighter than DG so I was willing to take my time, plan for the work, and not overdo it. The Fixer pitched in and we had mulch-lined paths in just a week. In the future, I can pay for some labor to refresh the paths if I decide I can’t do the labor anymore. But for the first time, I wanted to do it myself and define the paths.

I’m glad I chose mulch. Although right now it’s a little hard to differentiate the paths from the beds, since they’re both brown, as the beds fill in with their plantings it’ll look nicer. The mulch also allows for lots of microorganism activity underneath the beds. And because we had all we wanted, for free, I used it liberally. This helped smother weeds, saving me the labor of completely cleaning out the paths first.

Just Add Plants

All that was left to do was add plants. Many of the plants were left in place, but their bed shape was rearranged. The beds are smaller now and more manageable. I added roses from the Antique Rose Emporium, but I still have room for a few more. I didn’t want to fill the space for the sake of filling it. My space for roses is limited, so when I fill those last two spots, I want them to be something special. Over winter I’d sown flats of zinnias, calendulas, and gomphrena that will be placeholders until I decide what other two roses I want. These annuals will reseed freely throughout the herb garden each year and provide a lot of nectar for the butterflies.

My giant rosemary stayed in place and I filled the beds with dill, oregano, basil, parsley, mint, and fennel. I added some native sage and culinary sage. A mix of herbs, roses, and pollinator plants fulfills my original potager vision.