Thursday, October 29, 2009

Design Project Two :: A Suburban Garden Plan

Alright here's my neighborhood. My home is one in the middle.



I live on a one block, one way street. I have lived here for 7 years with my wife. We have added two daughters ages 4 and 2. Here's my property.



I've added some labels.



Here's some colour to help describe the property and my plan.

The backyard is heavily shaded and therefore is used as a place to keep chickens in my hot climate and a place to store equipment. I also compost and have a pair of worm bins. My family also uses the backyard as a place to relax, recreate and even cook. The side yard has fruit trees in various stages of production- hopefully the apples trees will bear next year, the peach trees have been bearing for three years. The red maple tree will eventually be removed as the fruit trees get larger.

The side yard has a swing set for the children, day lilies, strawberries and a place to store lots of fallen leaves for use as mulch. The side yard up against the southern side of house has had both vegetables and herbs in it over the years. Currently lemon balm has taken over.

The front yard is very sunny and is used to grow all sorts of herbs and vegetables. Perennials like asparagus and walking onions are present. Vines like kiwis and grapes and honeysuckle and others climb up all available columns. We often grow luffa up the southern facade of our home both as a way to provide shower scrubbers but also as a way to keep the house cooler in the summer.

The goal is not total food self sufficiency but a healthy environment with as many overlapping uses as is possible. Beautiful, edible, functional, playful, useful, self-maintaining, flexible and fun are words I use to describe what I intend for this space. Next week we'll talk about our strategy of expanding food production out into the neighbor instead of trying to grow all of our food within the boundaries of our property.

Here's a Google image from last May when the bamboo arbor was still in place over our front walk. We used it to grow luffas and morning glories.

5 comments:

internet directory said...

Hello the suburban garden are really really nice i love then cause i really enjoy to work on the garden in my house.

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It looks good and a great idea for me. I hope to have with money to make my dream come true...

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The design of the backyard is one of the most important things in the world, I would like to have my own house and design it as I want!22dd!

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xl pharmacy said...

THis is a great project, I'd like that more neighbors making something like this because our planet needs oxygen and people too, I think it is the most perfect thing they could do.