Rain Garden

After taking out two giant trees in a part of the yard where everything drains anyway, we definitely had standing water and the whole area by the sheds was wet wet wet. 

So my plans for that area got moved up in priority!

I decided that since I had a ton of extra wood chips no one wanted, I'd just go ahead and kill more grass and cover it in wood chips. Down went my tarp...

But during his visit, my Dad said it wouldn't take that long to just dig out the sod. 
Okaaaaay, knock yourself out! (I think he came to greatly regret his words!)

Meanwhile I was digging in the corner to get it flush with the grass. This was the corner where years of who knows what had piled up so it was always high ground aaaaand the maple tree roots had grown up into it. So not only am I removing 4-12" of soil, I'm removing tangles of dead roots. Worst. Job. Ever!
Not, not true.
My spade has had the tip broken/folded down for years, which makes digging very well difficult and then my rake broke, so NOW it was the worst job ever! 😵😵

But over two days we did it!!!

I removed by beloved photina fraseri because there just wasn't room for it and all the natives I wanted. A friend in the neighborhood actually took it from me!
This really gave me a blank slate (though I'm leaving the hostas for now until things fill in) and I found a few places with some native plants so in went the Blue False Indigo, 2 kinds of Joe Pye Weed, Blue Cardinal Flower, Foam Flower, Blue-eyed Grass, Hardy Hibiscus, Black Chokeberry, and probably others I'm forgetting!

A couple of weeks later I got some Sweetspire volunteers from a friend and then I decided to finally get the rest of the woodchips out of my driveway and just dumped them on cardboard onto the grass around the cherry tree to connect the two gardens!

Sooooo much new garden!!

Eventually I'll finish digging out the space by the shed so it's all flush and can drain well, but for now there's no space to place the mound of dirt, so there it sits!

I'm very excited to see how all of this works! I tried to get plants that do well in 4-5 hours of sun, but will also be fine when the oak tree grows and shades them. Some may need to be transplanted, but as we have probably at least 10 years before that's really an issue, I'm going to let future accidental gardener deal with it!

I realize that despite mulch and filling in with a bunch of violets from all over the yard, it's going to be several years of obnoxious weeding before everything fills in and it turns into the low maintenance beds I have elsewhere. (Figures this is the year of a bumper crop of maple trees....the seedlings are out of control!!) 

But for now I'm just basking in seeing all the new plants where once was mess along the entire side and back!!!!