Garden Muses: A Small Toronto Gardening Services Company Blog: September 2021

22.9.21

A Front Garden Rescue in the Allenby Neighbourhood of Toronto

I Can Hear the Neighbours Breathe a Sigh of Relief!

Once or twice every work season, I'm asked to weed or clean up a garden that "has gone to seed", that is, the weeds have taken over the beds or the existing shrubs haven't been pruned in over a decade. If things are too extreme and/or the gardens are too large, I often won't accept the project (I work by myself after all.)

So when I was given the client's address, walked up to the house and saw this, I thought "well, here we go again!"

Allenby Toronto Front Yard Cleanup Before

Here are some other views from various angles. They don't get any better.

Allenby Toronto Front Yard Cleanup Rescue Before

Toronto Allenby Front Yard Cleanup Before

Allenby Toronto Front Yard Cleanup Before

My heart sank a little (well, a lot) lower when I saw the river rocks protruding between the weeds as the odds were very high that the original installer used the classic "river rock on top of landscape fabric" technique. For those who have to weed these areas, you know my pain. Weeds will grow up and through the thin fabric from below or in between the rock crevices.

This was certainly the case here as the rocks are partially hidden by weeds.

I knew the weeding had to occur over several visits and wasn't looking forward to dealing with the river rocks.

The upper tier had no rocks but infested, for lack of a better word, with grass and creeping bellflower:

Toronto Allenby Front Yard Weeding Before

Toronto Front Yard Cleanup Before in the Allenby neighbourhood

Being Sisyphus Again

Remember the Greek legend of Sisyphus? You can research as to why he was punished but his eternal fate was to roll a huge boulder up a hill in the netherworld, seeing it fall back down and forced to roll it back up over and over. In other words, he was destined to repeat a futile, frustrating and backbreaking task.

Sounds familiar?

Just like me and river rocks!

For this cleanup, I had to place all the river rocks on the street (lucky they were near the road), uncover the old and tattered landscape fabric underneath, discard it, remove the weeds growing underneath, roll a new piece of fabric and place the rocks back on top.

Unlike poor Sisyphus though, this is not an eternal punishment for me at this client's front yard in dealing with the rocks but rest assured, I will be doing the same thing at another client's place sooner or later.

Here are some "after" pictures showing the garden being rescued. The clients were thrilled with the "new" area and I'm sure their neighbours were too.