(B)low Maintenance
The work season is well underway for me so here's another post dealing with a very small front garden spring cleanup I was hired to complete in Toronto's Mount Pleasant East neighbourhood.
Anyone who has or looks after an area covered with river rock knows the pain involved with keeping it looking tidy, especially if trees are nearby. (Well, if you pay people to do this, maybe it's not so physically painful.)
I see such "rock gardens" occasionally across the city where smooth medium sized stones ("river rock"), 3/4 inch drainage rock, rip rap, pea gravel, etc. are dumped on a property and, voilà, an instant "low maintenance" garden is created. You can even call it a xeriscape, if you're imaginative enough.
Except for the fact that most of the times, these gardens are anything but low maintenance. I prefer to call them "blow maintenance" since a leaf blower usually needs to be used to blow leaves and other small plant debris off the hardscape.
So it is with this post:
To give you context, there's a huge Norway Maple next door and its leaves which fell onto this garden weren't removed last fall. Raking is ineffective so I brought my cordless leaf blower specifically to deal with the river rock but it wasn't easy to remove the decomposing maple leaves and keys lodged in the rockery. I also removed the several dozen "saplings-to-be" (maple seeds which germinated last year) before they became a larger issue.
Kneeling on top of medium sized rocks, even on a cushion which use, to get at the germinated tree seeds and other emerging weeds isn't a fun chore for anyone!
So much for low maintenance...
I'll return in a few months to prune this overgrown "Bridal Wreath" spirea hedge (Spiraea prunifolia) which hasn't been touched in many years by the look of things.
Anyone who has or looks after an area covered with river rock knows the pain involved with keeping it looking tidy, especially if trees are nearby. (Well, if you pay people to do this, maybe it's not so physically painful.)
I see such "rock gardens" occasionally across the city where smooth medium sized stones ("river rock"), 3/4 inch drainage rock, rip rap, pea gravel, etc. are dumped on a property and, voilà, an instant "low maintenance" garden is created. You can even call it a xeriscape, if you're imaginative enough.
Except for the fact that most of the times, these gardens are anything but low maintenance. I prefer to call them "blow maintenance" since a leaf blower usually needs to be used to blow leaves and other small plant debris off the hardscape.
So it is with this post:
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| Mount Pleasant East Davisville Front Garden Spring Cleanup before |
To give you context, there's a huge Norway Maple next door and its leaves which fell onto this garden weren't removed last fall. Raking is ineffective so I brought my cordless leaf blower specifically to deal with the river rock but it wasn't easy to remove the decomposing maple leaves and keys lodged in the rockery. I also removed the several dozen "saplings-to-be" (maple seeds which germinated last year) before they became a larger issue.
Kneeling on top of medium sized rocks, even on a cushion which use, to get at the germinated tree seeds and other emerging weeds isn't a fun chore for anyone!
So much for low maintenance...
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| Mount Pleasant East Davisville Front Garden Spring Cleanup After |
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| Spring Front Garden Cleanup before Mount Pleasant East Davisville |
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| Spring Front Garden Cleanup After Mount Pleasant East Davisville |
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| Front Garden Spring Cleanup before Mount Pleasant East Davisville |
I'll return in a few months to prune this overgrown "Bridal Wreath" spirea hedge (Spiraea prunifolia) which hasn't been touched in many years by the look of things.
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| Front Garden Spring Cleanup After Mount Pleasant East Davisville |
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| Mount Pleasant East Davisville Spring Front Garden Cleanup before |
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| Mount Pleasant East Davisville Spring Front Garden Cleanup after |
