It's About Time

As you can tell, it has been almost a year since I posted anything.  Needless to say, it was a busy year.  My gardener friend Diane and I spent a great deal of the year restoring a Jens Jensen landscape in Indianapolis at a private residence.  The project is important to me on so many levels, and I am anxious to see the plantings develop over the next several years.  Diane and I had help from our husbands and various other people on occasion, but for the most part it was her mostly and me and the homeowner out there in the yard.

Here is Diane watering in a super quality native Hawthorne from Possibility Place Nursery.  It took some effort to find the native species plants indicated in the original Jensen design, but we are sure it will be well worth it.  In all we put in thousands of plants ranging from daffodil bulbs and tree seedlings to 1 3/4" caliper crab apples.  Diane and her husband also spread two semi loads of mulch on this 3 acre project.

The original stone paths were found by the homeowner during prep of the site.  It was completely overgrown with locust trees, honeysuckle and big leaf winter creeper.  The large oaks and maples were saved.  Here is a new bench placed per the design near the pond.  It looks lovely at the base of this tree.  A "house of bugs" was found at the base of the bench which turned out to be yellow jackets.  They were sprayed repeatedly and finally cleared out.

Here is the witch hazel in full bloom in October.  It is a glorious specimen at least 30' tall and wide.  We planted several more to form a colony.  I have no doubt that this was an original from the 1920s. Way in the back of this photo you see the neighbor's house.  They were so upset by the removal of all of the vegetation that they had a row of very large arborvitae planted right on the property line as a screen.  How sad that they will miss out on the view of a Jensen design out of their windows.

Diane and I will be preparing a program about this project  that we will present at our local Master Gardener meeting in November 2010.  We will have a whole year of photos to share.  I'll keep updates on the landscape's progress on this blog.