Summit Native Garden

After years of trying, I finally learned this spring that we have been granted a $350 Lawns to Legumes grant to put in a pocket native garden at Summit!

I had so many great ideas. A bee lawn! New trees! Native gardens all over! I finally settled on putting a native pocket garden along the edge of the pool, on the east side between the pool and the fence, which has always been a challenging spot. I ordered all my plants (they sell out early) and waited for spring to come!

And then there was that huge April 1 snowstorm that killed the pool, and the decking, and the fence, and the serviceberry....

Too late to do anything else though.

So we cleared it up and it only got worse (and no insurance coverage):

So I cleared it to get ready to plant:

Put in the plants but the dry spring/summer did not do much to help (and the stones out and collapsing fence made it look even worse):

The ammonia already there bloomed and made it look better (though it's non-native), as did the fish sculptures we had seen in Door County that I got Patrick for Christmas. Someone gave me some pansies they were done with and the color helped too.

But even then many of the starts died anyway.

We didn't have enough money left to get a new serviceberry, but headed to Outback Nursery in Hastings (awesome spot!) on a very hot July 3 to get a tiny start of one for cheap.

Put it in and caged it to keep it from bunny damage:

I'm going to say the final result is decidedly mixed.

It looks ok but not great. The best results are from some rue and spider plant people gave me. I don't know if I would plant starts again; we spent over $200 and most of them died with the weather, even with an irrigation system in.

I clearly thought a native garden was going to be easier than it was.

I think it looks ok but by no means great. And it's super-weedy. I'm struggling with the whole back yard at Summit — it's not the magic place I want it to be — and I am not sure this is helping.

I really want to just go spend tons of money on mature plants at Gerten's, but between the pool and A/C replacement costs that's not in the cards.

Stay tuned next year; hopefully as it matures it will look better!

(I still recommend applying to Lawns to Legumes, and watershed grants if they apply to you! The program people were great, and I can't say enough good things about the coaches I was assigned to; they were the ones that convinced me to go to Outback and get my serviceberry!)