Mulch Madness

Thanks to our arborist, Mitch, I recently became enamored (obsessed?) with the idea of turning a long-time mess in our backyard into a native plant garden.  The area I'm talking about has four Western Hemlocks, a Cascara, and a Vine Maple which are all good honest Northwest Natives and  provide a fine infrastructure for what I hope to be a garden that will someday look kind of like this:

Trillium

 

 

 

Bracken and stuff

In other words, I want to create a garden that looks like the lowland Western Washington forest that has evolved over the thousands of years since the last ice age.  Until this winter, when Mitch went to town on it, there were dead branches going every which way on the lower parts of the hemlocks that made it difficult to enter that part of the yard without being wacked in the face or impaled by one of these menaces.  Mitch cut them all off and got really excited when I told him what I was thinking about.  It turns out he is a native plant aficionado and told me exactly how to go about it.

Aside from those lethal dead branches, the other problem in this part of the yard is an infestation of English Ivy which is invading from both of our next door neighbors' yards.  I love England but I really wish the Brits had KEPT THEIR DAMNED IVY TO THEMSELVES!  But of course Mitch knows how to handle this problem too.  Here it is: cover the bastards with sheets of cardboard and then add a layer of mulch on top.  This allows water to reach the tree roots but the ivy dies a horrible death from starvation due to lack of sunlight.  The very thought makes me rub my hands and chuckle with dark glee.

So I ordered two yards of Cedar Grove Compost which arrived late last week and is made from the yard waste that we all recycle.  As a result, there was an imposing mountain of mulch at the end of our driveway which I spent the weekend shoveling and wheelbarrowing to the back yard.  My arms and back are sore.  Luckily I have a strong young adult daughter to share the work.

And here is the result:

Before

After

 and:

Before

After

As well as:

Before

After

This was just the first step.  Now comes the more interesting phase: planting many of the forest denizens I learned about last summer in the Seattle Mountaineers' Naturalist class.  I especially like these guys which I hope will agree to grow for me:

Tiger Lilies

Also my favorite ferns are in the plan, i.e. Sword, Lady, and Wood as well as Oregon Grape, Evergreen Huckleberry, Bleeding Heart, Fringecups, etc etc.  I have only recently become fully aware of the biological riches of our lowland forests so this should be fun!

And finally, this too lives in our back yard:

Camellia - not a native but pretty nonetheless