We have a patch of raspberries and blackberries in Linda’s Serenity Garden. The bushes have been in place for 3 years now and have become very hearty and have been growing taller each year. This year I built a trellis to help contain the bushes and make it possible to walk beside them and pick the berries with out getting all scratched up.

I took some 1″ PCV pipe and cut it into 4′ long sections on my chop saw. I then used U joints to connect the sections together. One cross section with legs. I laid the PCV pipe on the garage floor to help keep everything lined up and straight. For the back trellis I built one with 4 sections. The last section was cut back to 24″, which give it a length of 14 feet. The front trellis was built with 2 sections, for a length of 8 feet.

I placed the PVC pipe in the ground using a hammer and a small piece of 2″x4″ lumber. I then stretched a plastic mesh material that I purchased at a local nursery. This mesh was made for plant support. The mesh was attached with wire ties to the pipe and then cut to size with a pair of scissors.  After all of this was done the while plastic pipe just stood out in the garden like a sore thumb. Something needed to be done to make it blend in better with its surroundings. I went to the hardware store and purchased a can of black paint that is made to put on plastic furniture. I sprayed the pipe black and it blended in better with its surroundings. The two trellis did their job this season and we were able to pick berries without getting all scratched up.

White berry trellis.

One berry trellis painted black. You can see how it is already starting to blend into the garden.

Linda’s Serenity Garden has taken every inch of the front and backyards of our home. The only grass area’s left this Spring where the walkways.  When we needed to replace our lawn mower that tiny bit of grass did not justify purchasing a new mower.

We were planing to dig up the grass sod and then put down cedar wood chips as a walking surface. The arborist suggested that we use the chipped debris from the five trees he just removed from the south property line.  His suggestion would eliminate the labor of digging up the sod! Yeah!  The arborist recommended covering  the sod with the chipped debri at least four inches thick. We followed his advice and spread the chips over the  walkways.  Within two months, the chips had killed all of the grass and the chips had compressed down to less then 2 inches high.

However, the chips included the needles and branches from the evergreen trees and did not have the eye appeal we wanted.

I went to the local bark supply firm and brought home a load of cedar wood chips. I spread the cedar wood chips right over the first layer.  The appeal of the garden was transformed! The uniform color of the chips and the fullness of the covering of the walkways made the garden look complete. You can judge from the photos.

Walk way of grass between shrubbery.

REA Express wagon from above photo with new cedar wood chips layed down in the walkway. Compare the differance in looks.

Linda on a small grass walkway under the bird feeders, holding a friends puppy.

Prepairing the garden and walkways May 2010

Supplies and Materal need, woodchips, wheelbarrow & flat shovel. I found the short handle shovel was a lot easier to work with than the long handle shovel.

Here I am starting to cover the orginal wood chip base with the new cedar wood chips. The differance in the apperance between the two types of chips is quite striking.

Cedar chips on walkway to the green house

Walkway where Linda was on the grass holding the puppy with grass replaced by the new cedar wood chips.

We had a chair that the bottom strapping had worn out and broken through. In our town you just can not put a chair out next to your trash can and have it picked up. You have to take it to the transfer station and throw it into a inter-modal container which is then taken by truck to the railroad yard and put on the daily unit garbage train and taken to the landfill. The minimum fee for the transfer station is $20.00. Throwing this chair out was not worth $20.00 that was for sure.

Need is the mother of invention and we needed to find something to do with this old patio chair. Bob had the idea of turning it into a planter. We found a pot that would fit inside the chair frame. Bob had a some small cut off pieces of  2″x4″ treated lumber from building the fence. These where put on the ground and the pot set on top of them. Linda filled the pot with some gravel in the bottom for drainage and a mixture of potting soil and 1/3 compost, then planted the pot with some flowers We now had a new garden accent for the cost of a new pot! The cost of the pot was a lot less then the $20.00 fee at the transfer station.

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We had 5 evergreen trees growing on the property line between our house and the one next door. They had been planted by the builder when the houses where constructed about 12 years ago. They had grown to be 60 feet tall and where still growing. This type of tree grows to be 120 feet tall when fully grown. They where becoming a hazard in high winds and they where blocking much of the sun from Linda’s Serenity Garden. They had to be removed.

Once the trees where removed we now had great sun down the south side of the house for the first time since we lived here, but the yard was now open to the one next door which did not set the flower garden that is our back yard off very good. Linda wanted a fence built to draw the eye back to here Serenity Garden.

I first built a short 10 foot fence from the house wall to the walkway that would hide the propane tanks that where now in view since we had the shrubs removed along the side of the house when the trees where being removed.  Lining up the 6ft ceder fence boards here was easy. I put a 2″ X 4″ board on the ground, got it level and just put the fence fence boards on top of it. For the time being until I can build arbor I put a wrought iron arbor we purchased in the entry way.

Down the side of the property line where the trees had been removed we added garden composted soil to the ground which made the ground a bit higher. I wanted to keep the fence about 9″ above the ground so none of the soil would touch it and rot it’s boards. The ground also has a slope to the rear of the property so just laying a board on the ground was not an option.

Fence Jig

To line up my fence boards from the top I built a jig. I took a 2″ x 4″ board and screwed a 1″ X 8″ board on top of this. I was then able to sit this on top of the 2″X4″ treated board, put two nails in place to hold it and line up my fence boards from the top of the fence instead of the bottom. To give the fence some character I made a patten with the boards where I spaced the boards on both sides of the fence. The 1″ X8″ allowed me to work on both sides of the fence.

The fence was a two weekend project. The first weekend was a Sunday

Under construction with jig in place

afternoon putting the posts into the ground about 18″ deep and setting them with concrete. Since this is the Pacific Northwest and as soon as I got the fence posts in place and the concrete poured it just had to start to rain. We took 30 quart trash bags and used them to covered up the newly poured cement, throwing shovels of dirt on top of  them to hold them in place to let the concrete set up.  The following Saturday was spent actually constructing the fence.

Linda purchased red runner pole bean seeds this spring.  Linda selected Red Runner Beans for three reasons:  their height would provide shade for the house, the red blossoms attract humming birds, and the beans are edible.The package said they grow to be 9 to 10 feet tall. She started to germinate them in her greenhouse between two damp towels until  sprouted.

I needed to have a bean trellis built for her before she could  plant the seeds in the ground. The area where she wanted to grow them was on the southeast corner of the house, in an area where we had just removed five evergreen trees that were way too large and too close together.  We also removed three mugo pine that were badly over grown.  This opened up the whole yard to sunlight.

As I  was wondering how in the world I was going to build a trellis 10 feet high, the idea came to me to just use the side of the house as a support. Once this idea came to me it was easy. The netting that Linda purchased at the nursery was 7 feet wide. I had an area 9 feet wide where she wanted to plant her pole beans. I dug three holes the first two 7 feet apart and the third one 2 feet from the second about 18 inches deep. I purchased three 16 foot treated 2″x4″ at the lumber hard.  I put them into the holes, nailed them onto the eves of the roof, back filled the three holes and tamped the dirt.  Next I ran 1″x2″ furring strips up the posts on 24 inch centers. I started the first cross strip 6 inches above the soil.

Plant Netting Material

The netting material was 20 feet long. Linda and I rolled it out on the ground and cut it into two 10 foot pieces. I next stapled the netting onto the frame I had built starting from the top. I put the 7′ x 10′ piece up first. Once it was securely stapled in place I took the other 7′x10′ piece of netting and stapled it onto the remaining 2 foot wide area of the frame. Once the netting was securely stapled in place I  used a pair of scissors and trimmed it to size.

Now that the pole beans are in the ground and the trellis is built I am waiting to watch these beans grow and find out if they really can grow to be 9 feet tall.