When I first started Overleaf Garden, a “Master Plan” of sorts quickly formed in my mind. I’ve found that is often the case when I’m designing almost anything. After giving the project some careful thought and consideration, the larger framework of design tends to form quickly. As a designer I’ve learned it’s best not to over-think the big picture, and to trust what your design eye shows you. After all, there will be plenty of time and need to tinker, tweak and fuss as the project develops. They don’t say “the devil is in the details” for no reason. In the diagram above I’ve overachieved and drawn out a detailed plan of the backyard garden at Overleaf. In keeping with the character of Overleaf House, it’s a simplified formal layout, inspired by a formal French garden. The raised beds are formed by standard 8”x8”x16” concrete masonry units, CMU’s, aka cinder blocks (even though that’ a misnomer). Each square raised bed yields 64 sq ft of garden space. The beds around the fire pit are slightly smaller, and the two larger beds on the east end are slightly more than twice that size. There is even more gardening area in the beds around the edges of the yard. The mostly grass pathway intersections are demarcated by brick “thresholds” with a centered round pea-gravel stepping stone. The center of the garden is a “Fire Court” of flagstone with raised Fire Pit. I can imagine having friends over on mild fall, winter, and spring evenings to enjoy drinks around the fire. The open ended CMU borders of the bed are reserved for native and naturalized flowers to attract pollinators to the garden. There are a few other areas that will have some sort of pavement, which in my mind will consist of “found” pavers, bricks, stones, and tiles to purposefully give an assembled look. That was the plan… and mostly still is… until this week.
Now, my stated goals for this past week were to complete cleaning up the overgrown weeds on the pathways around the borders of Overleaf Garden, but I didn’t do that. Besides being too hot to get any real work done, I realized that keeping that part of the garden as a weed free path is a labor intensive job with limited payout. I had to remind myself I’m making a garden, not a system of pathways, and decided to maximize the growing space by revising the border bed layouts. This meant a rather intensive redesign of the overall Overleaf Garden Plan, as seen below. To be truthful this isn’t a completely new idea. I had toyed with it when I created the first design pictured above. I like the redesign because it gives me more room for fruit trees. The first plan allowed for four citrus trees and three fig trees. The new plan allows for seven citrus trees and six fig trees. I even managed to do it without sacrificing too much of the perennial vegetable beds. Another plus is it will take fewer CMU blocks to complete the design. I even added in some Kumquat trees and dwarf Yaupon Hollies. It’s still a work in progress, but this edit represents and fairly substantial change and will help me move forward with my continuing cleanup, which is re-scheduled for next week… and all I needed was a simple little plan.
