The largest and heaviest package ever sat under our Christmas tree, a combined gift to me from Bob and his Mom.  My guess was a stone bird bath, like the Country Gardens Bird Bath at Garden Accent Heaven.  The first piece out was the removable roof piece of the Miniature English Garden Cottage at Garden Accent Heaven.

The roof piece was certainly not a part for a bird bath, so I dug deeper in to

I dug deeper in to the well packed box to find the house portion. What a delightful gift!

the well packed box to find the house portion.  What a delightful gift!

With the installation of the drip water system and the resulting delays, we finally came up with a plan and location to feature the English Cottage Garden.  At last Bob has completed the platform construction before he leaves for his three week trip to Pennsylvania and Ontario. And at last, I have the vegetables and flowers planted and I can take a Sunday drive to my favorite nursery Flower World.  I really love the variety of plants they have, the healthy condition of the plants,  the friendly attitude that permeates the staff, the information booth that is always staffed with a knowledgeable  consultant, and their prices are the best!

Check out my pics for ideas about what you can do!

Such a lovely gift to be enjoyed for many years!  I will keep you posted as the seasons change!

You will likely recognize some of the succulent plants which are very low maintenance and really great ground covers.  The names of the ones I know are:

Couple of varieties of  Hens and Chicks;

Stonecrop Sedum called Tricolor with striking foliage complementing soft pink flowers;

Sedum Seboldii October Daphne with blue green arching stems gracing this hardy deciduous sedum and pink flowers forming in late summer;

Erysimum kotschyanum Creeping Wallflower, a dwarf mat forming rock garden plant with small bright yellow fragrant flowers;

Woolly Thyme, an herb with tiny silver-gray leaves and rose-pink flowers for rock gardens and paving stones.

Soleirolia soleirolii Baby Tears, in chartreuse and green, spreads easily, needs to be contained.

I opened my Christmas present expecting to find a bird bath and instead I found a roof!

I began by placing the miniature garden tools, pots and furniture around the cottage.

Details I added to the front of my cottage.

Next I began to put my pots of ground cover and succlents in place and moved them about until I had a pleasing arrangement.

I planted all of my plants and then added decorative rocks and pices of petrified wood.

Once I had all the plants and little miniature details in place the cottage looked good but seemed to be missing something?

I went to the pet store and purchased some large aquarium rocks and made a path of stepping stones which was the final detail needed to bring my miniature garden cottage to life.

The cold winter months are here. Jack Frost visits us most mornings and we are

Heated Bird Baths in Linda's Serenity Garden

scraping the frost off our car windows each morning. Those cold winter nights also freeze over the shallow sources of water that our feathered friends need. Birds need to have shallow sources of water not only to drink but also to clean themselves. In Linda’s Serenity Garden we have two heated bird baths to keep fresh water available to our backyard songbirds all winter wrong. We have one Allied Metal Stand Heated Bird Bath. Inside of the bowl Linda has 3 decorative rocks that give the birds a place to access the water from. We keep about 2″ of water in the bowl year round.

On the ground we have a Farm Innovators Ground Heated Bird Bath. This bird bath sits on the ground and holds about 1 gallon of water. We have seen the ground feeding birds jump into it to drink and clean their feathers. Also squirrels, possums and raccoons have also been seen drinking from this ground bird bath. With these two heated bird baths we have fresh clean water available for our feathered friends year round.

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.

JC48HYP7QCZM

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 from Garden Accent Heaven shows you some of the plants that she grew over the winter inside of her greenhouse.