Now that almost all of the interior work is complete (waiting on kitchen cabinet delivery third week of Sep) and the summer is cooling off, we are trying to get the landscaping established.
The yard was graded and a depression dug for the rain garden as shown in the previous post. The gardens will feature low maintenance (water) and mostly native plant species. What water is needed for plants will come from the rain water cistern.
The front and back gardens are named the Winter and Summer Solstice gardens, respectively. Ty is shaping the gardens and placing elements that align with the sun rise and sunset angles on these days.
[singlepic id=788 w=200 h=150 float=left]The homeowners hard at work planting boxwood and barberry plants along the front of the house. Near the front door are a red crawling sedum variety which will be planted in front of the shrubs.
In the back we pumped water out of the cistern to see where the rain garden depression would retain water in order to place the plants. The purpose of a rain garden is not to hold water like a pond, but to merely retain it long enough that it stays on the property to evaporate and soak back into the ground. This prevents erosion and runoff into the storm sewer system. As described in a previous post, the cistern will collect all roof rainwater and when full has an overflow directed into the rain garden depression.
Any standing water in a rain garden should generally disappear within a day or so, but the area will remain wet for a longer period of time. Plants must be tolerant of some standing water and saturated soil.
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A couple days after planting we got a real rain, which with a full cistern put the rain garden to the test. It worked perfectly. Below is the access cover to the cistern and to the right is the overflow pipe which directs water into the rain garden.
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In the front yard we have ordered a Styrax Japonicus or Japanese Snowbell tree. This flowering tree not only looks beautiful, but is historically very useful. Among the uses are perfumes, incenses, and medicinal. We are most interested in this tree because a useful substance known as styrene can be extracted from its resin. Polystyrene plastic is made from styrene, so you can see the relationship that this tree shares with the EPS or expanded polystyrene insulation that forms the core of the SIPs used to construct the house. While the EPS used today is derived from petroleum, the roots of this material are of a natural origin and could perhaps revert back to this source at some point.
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I like the presumed theme of your garden. It reminds me of the futuristic calresian design done in the 70’s.