Gardening in Busted Stick.: A Rose is a Rose

Welcome to Busted Stick

I actually live in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, where the winters are usually mild and the summers are brutal. I have, in my 15 years here, killed an untold number of plants. It took me a few years to realize that my gardening knowledge was based on living in Michigan for most of my childhood and what works there, won't work here.

I've long had dreams of having an English Cottage look and feel to my gardens. I gave up that dream and settled for "safe" trees and bushes, and then an ice storm unlike anything we've ever seen hit Tulsa in 2007 and killed almost every bush and tree I own. Leaving me momentarily heartbroken, but totally inspired.

I'm slowly re-developing my yard and painting the landscape I've seen in my inner vision since arriving. It can be done. It just takes patience, time, and a lot of research.

That's what this blog is. The culmination of my learning, my mistakes (and I've made many already) and hopefully in time, you will see my new canvas and my studying, trial and error, pay off with beauty.

I hope you keep coming back and checking on the progress. I'm excited.

What I'm Working on Right Now

This South West corner is the newest room in my yard. I will be working on this space most of the winter to get it ready for Spring planting. It is by far the most unsightly, what with the utility boxes and whatnot. It's also under a "no dig" restriction, so I'm having to build up and be creative with pots and planting locations. This is primarily shaded, I'm researching color and cover options while keeping it usable to as much of an extent as possible.

I've already added the trellis, as well as two bushes to hide the boxes - and I'm building up a brick garden spot just outside of the shade and next to the trellis for my climbing morning glories. I like entrances.

In the back will be large pots of ferns, hostas, and whatever other shade loving things I can find. - My "pots" won't be pots so much as they will be feeding troughs from the local AG store. A trick I learned from a California gardener who wasn't allowed to dig in parts of his yard either because of right of way restrictions.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

A Rose is a Rose

Losing all three of my pine trees out front left my yard looking more than a little sad. The sun is strong in Oklahoma and my house faces East. I thought the gaping hole left by my trees would be the perfect spot for a rose garden.

Building this garden took work, but wasn't quite as difficult as I had thought. Friends of ours had just purchased a home in the hills of Keystone Lake and had rocks they were digging out of their yard - two wrongs don't make a right. They learned that those rocks are what kept the dirt in place, and I learned moving roses wasn't very bright.

Being the homicidal horticulturist in denial, I made a lot of rookie mistakes. I built the edging just fine. Found the right mixture of black dirt, compost and fertilizer, but do you notice that my roses are in bloom? I moved them without pruning them. I also moved them without checking for disease. Turns out, my roses had fireblight. I'm not sure how it started, but one went down and took the rest with them.

This is the last rose I saw before I had to dig out my new bed and start again.