My Home Garden's "Roots"

After taking out a couple dead and overgrown trees last spring, we came up with a plan to replace our 500 square foot front yard with edible landscaping. Where there used to reside a rotting Japanese maple and a dead-branched blue spruce, there is now a recycled cement mosaic path, raised veggie beds, fruit trees, and berries. My old landscape plan skills from high school came back into play here, you can see. The top of the page is north and the street. The dogwood and 4 large rhodies at the top are preexisting in a perennial bed area, as is the stump from the japanese maple (which is graced with a big pot of nasturiums!). The cement path on the right goes along our driveway up to the front door. After playing around with the path placement after we took the trees down, I watched the shadows during the day and realized the path to the side gate (and composting area) should best be near the house to take full advantage of the sunny areas for veggies out of the house's shadow.

For my birthday last year I received 2 fruit trees from Raintree Nursery, an awesome WA nursery, from my boys. When they arrived I got a bonus: instead of getting the promised 4-way cherry, mine is a FIVE way! Rainier, Lapin, Early Burlat, Kristin, and (surprise!) tart pie cherry Montmorency too! The second tree is an Italian Prune Plum, a dwarf tree with delicious bite-sized fruit that can be eaten fresh or dried.