Pacific Northwest Gardening: Um...hi...I'm new here..., 1 by outtamygourd

outtamygourd wrote:
Wow...thanks everyone. What a kind and friendly group. Katye asked a few questions, so here's some info. I work M-Th so have F-Su to work outside, and after work during the longer days seasons. Our weekends are usually fairly busy as we are involved with our bloodhound in search and rescue and train often but usually only every other weekend. Our "boys" have their own fenced yard (of course, this was the first landscaping we did) and our kids are long grown and gone. We have one acre, which includes an area we call the "Quarter Acre Wood" simply because that's what it is. There is a small clearing in the center I would LOVE to do something with but last summer was filled with blackberries and solid with head-high nettles (I don't like them even a tad). I plan a vegetable garden on the north border of the property. I would love to be able to do it all at once but feel it would be too cost prohibitive, so will have "phases." My priorities are fragrance, color, texture. I'd love to attract birds and butterflies as well. We have a small view of the Strait to the northeast, so I want to keep things fairly low-growing on that side. The area to landscape is approximately 100' x 150' but not square because of our garage. We put in 2 Ranier cherries and a Fuji apple last summer. I don't like chain link fencing so have planted 5 passion vines, 3 honeysuckle, and 2 clematis on the fence to hopefully cover it some day. We live at the end of a 600' dirt access and my vision is as I turn into our property to be beaten in the face by an explosion of color and have so much fragrance I can't stop sneezing. I will take some pix and post them but don't want to be a forum hog, either.

I'd love to go along on nursery excursions. Tilly...sounds like you live very close to my bro and s-i-l, who just a few months ago moved into their new house in Poulsbo on Seminole. I believe it's about 1-1/2 miles from the bridge, so she will be landscaping as well.

And Katie...love the hounds. Hi to Bug and Magic from Chile dog and