Last year when Mr. B was laying out a new gravel path up to our house on the hill, we decided to remove all the grass in the Plum Garden, create more garden beds, and add a circular gravel path.
My favourite fruit is nectarines, so we invested in a hardy dwarf nectarine tree sapling to be the centrepiece of the new garden layout and planted it March 2nd, 2025. Unfortunately it developed a bad case of peach leaf curl over the spring, and we were advised by local gardeners to put it under cover as rain and even dew was spreading the disease. In order to do that we had to pot it up and put it on our deck under the eaves, which meant our centrepiece for the garden was no longer an option.
Mr. B and I discussed different ideas to replace it, and I thought maybe a big beautiful peony would be nice in the centre, but we kept getting stuck as there are some bigger problems in the garden that needed to be addressed first:
- The circular gravel path isn’t working. It is too narrow for our wheelbarrow (2 front tires), which makes working in the garden challenging. The path needs to be a min. 30″ wide.
- I don’t like the look of the gravel in the garden. It makes everything look too dry. We need more green. It also gets full of weeds very quickly so is hard to maintain. We recycled some old wood blocks to create the borders but they don’t stay in place and I hate them. The gravel we had delivered is too big and round and is difficult to walk on.
- The garden beds are too wide. Reaching across the garden beds is impossible, especially the ones that are up against the fence, which means there’s always weeds or invasive plants taking over, and the only way to reach them is to walk through the beds, which means a lot of tender plants were getting trampled by Mr. B’s gumboots. We also had to add more stepping stones so are losing large swaths of garden bed that could be planted with more flowers for the pollinators.
- The areas where we removed the lawn has terrible soil. It’s dry and crumbly, and nothing wants to grow. The rest of the beds have been amended for over a decade with lasagna gardening layers of kitchen scraps, compost, seaweed, leaves, etc… and they are lovely and rich, loaded with worms.
- Two of the roses are not situated well and need to be moved. One of them is a climbing rose and the other is a long stem rose, but they are in front of a massive rosemary bush (and weeds!) that is blocked by galvanized metal mesh for the rose to climb, so we can’t access the rosemary or weeds at all.
- Our two plum trees are at least 25 years old and one has started throwing up loads of suckers, which can be an indicator they were reaching the end of fruitful production. We did a hail-mary heavy prune on the yellow plum last spring and we are hoping it rejuvenates, but if not, there’s one very strong sucker that is growing quite close to a large mossy rock, and needs to be espaliered if we are going to keep it.
- Lavender plants were planted under the wisteria, but was not thriving, so we moved it to the arboretum where it has better draining soil and a lot more sun. It became another very weedy area.
- The two wisteria plants are too fanned out and need to be trained to grow up as more of a trunk and then have the blossoms hanging over the big piece of driftwood above.
- I haven’t planned my perennials well. My vision/dream is to have a cottage style garden full of flowers for the pollinators and loads of options for cut flowers. Right now it’s a mess of weeds, invasives, and awkwardly placed perennials that are getting suffocated by buttercups and weeds.
- My older tulip bulbs didn’t have any blooms this year or didn’t come up at all. None of the freesia bulbs came up.
Solutions:
- Remove all the gravel, and map out a new pathway that creates narrower garden beds along both sides. Make it 30” wide to accommodate the wheelbarrow. Move all perennials we want to save, lay down cardboard on the new path to kill weeds over the winter. In the spring get a load of good soil for the path, and plant dutch micro clover on all the paths to add a more lush green feeling to the Plum Garden. Clover is a nitrogen fixer that will also help amend the poor soil in the areas that need it most. We grew a clover lawn (different area of the yard) this spring and it’s amazing to walk on and super lush and green. More of that, please!!
- Install an arch over the new path to espalier the plum sucker on one side, and train the climbing rose up the other side. Add another climbing rose to fill it out. Remove the old mesh from the current rose’s location, to move the red rose in beside the rosemary. Rose will get more sun there too.
- Retrain the two wisterias up the large white posts and train it to drape it over the large piece of driftwood above. Transplant thyme ground cover (currently being suffocated by weeds between pavers we are going to remove) under the wisteria arch.
- Move taller perennials to the back/centre of beds with shorter ones along the edges/front.
- Invest in a few more perennials, like common or winter jasmine to cover the deer fence, a peony as a feature for one of the new garden beds, add another coloured climbing rose to add more interest to the arch. Refresh the spring bulbs around the garden.
- Dig up clumps of wildflowers that are growing where the new path will be, and disperse them around the new beds so they can go to seed and come back next year again. Plant more of them in winter sowing jugs again this winter to fill in any gaps in the spring.
- Create a little seating area to enjoy the garden when it’s in full bloom. Where would you put it? The garden slopes down gradually from the door to the clematis, which is under shade from a large old neighbours apple tree that overhangs. Maybe beside the arch with the climbing roses behind you? It would also be the best place to view wisteria blooms in future…
We started the new plan last weekend! The new clover path is marked out, the arch is in place and Mr. B has started moving the gravel out. This weekend we will be moving some wildflowers, and finish removing the gravel.
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Plum Hill 