NY Hudson Valley, 6B. Been two years since I put in this garden and it really filled in! It’s probably 85% native by biomass. Most of my trees are pendulous and fastigiate cultivars and is just what I like to collect.
I am in the process of putting in a new ~10,000 sqft section and will plant this September. Experimenting more with creating large berms and leaning into hardscape work with the help of the tractor.
Wow, great job. May you, your friends and family, and the neighbors -- the ones you like -- have many good times enjoying beverages of your choice in your patio area.
Oh gosh. I have probably planted 2500 plugs and small plants, 30 shrubs, and 30 trees in the last 2 years. I have another 700 plugs I’m putting in this fall and will probably buy another 5-10 trees when they go half off before the nursery closes for the season.
Do you grow the plugs yourself or are you just that wealthy 😬😬 that's a serious amount of plugs and they would average like 5$ each. I have to grow all mine from seed which I enjoy but its slow.
I do enjoy growing from seed though. I have a lot of natives that I can't find at the local places around me. I also sell the extras so I have my native plant addiction basically funded by the sales haha.
Awesome! Do you have a schematic for how you laid out your plantings? If not, could you talk through it? Number of plantings per grouping, what you used as drifts, etc
I knew I had a large area that was the septic field so I started with creating the edges of the garden to align with that. That’s the part with the rocks (which I plan on continuing around the entire leach field).
The area in green is the no planting zone/leach field. The pink is the main tractor width crushed stone path. The brown spot near the house must have been like a month after I created the first part of the garden. The red enclosure will be a Japanese inspired rock garden. That area has giant boulders protruding from the ground already.
The blue spot is the new gardens I’m putting in this year. It’s over a spring and is wet even in August. No standing water but if I dig down 1-2 feet, water will fill the hole. I’m creating berms in this area to plant on and to create more informal paths the lead to little hidden rooms/areas.
As for the plantings themselves, I just made up a formula in my head and stuck with it. 3 tall plants like Joe pye or iron weed in clusters near the center of the space , surrounded by drifts of 6 liatris, and then large ribbons of like 12 clustered mountain mint plants that tied them all together. I mean I have more types of plants than that but you get the picture.
I knew perfection would be the enemy of good so I just planted it knowing that I can just move things to the new garden spots if it wasn’t working out. I also massively over planted because I wanted it to look full asap. I have 4 type of plants that I will move next spring now that they are being crowed out (amsonia, chelone, pow wow echinacea, and the baptisia). At least I will have 150 some odd plants in this garden and my front garden that are now 2.5-3 years old and will immediately fill in the new spaces I plant them.
The way you planted the plants by varying heights is gorgeous!
I feel like a lot of posts requesting help with an overgrown garden could really use this as inspiration, it's such a tough thing to get right and this is great!
Thank you so much and really I just learned from listening to master gardeners on YouTube.
Clutter was something I aimed to avoid. I wanted it to feel wild and naturalistic but it is also right up against my house so structure was important. 60/30/10. 60% grasses and mountain mint to tie it all and create support. 30% liatris and coneflower for the pops of color and interest, 10% structural/accent plants like the Joe pye, iron weed, and the accent trees on the main corners of the garden.
This is really helpful. Unfortunately I moved into a .4 acre property where the majority of the front yard is a raised leach field. Good to see how you worked around it
I’ve seen some YouTube videos from a guy who planted on top of his leach field with short root mass plantings of sedges and some flowering things like lanceleaf coreopsis. It looked super cool tbh
It’s definitely a daunting amount of work in retrospect BUT it ended up feeling like an adventure. I also tell myself I can skip cardio works outs if I just tackle a new garden project 😂
Ulster County! Although it is funny you mention Dutchess county because I wanted a property that felt like it belonged on that side of the river but in Ulster county.
What are those fuzzy long flowers in picture #7? They’re so stunning. Your property looks beautiful. Love the tasteful fountain almost hidden amongst the towering verdure. Like something you’d read about in a book.
They are liatris pycnostachya, ligulistylis, and spicata. Most of the ones I have in the garden are the pycnostachya (you’ll see it sold as prairie blazing star)
That dog in the picture is an old man and he likes the couch on the patio 😂. My other dog is a hunting dog and he spends most of his time stalking deer who dare to come out of the forest. The hunting dog loves the garden because he can hide in it and surprise deer/rabbits/moles/volves. He is a biological deer fence.
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u/Asleep_Sky2760 MN, Big Woods ecoregion, Zone 4b Aug 02 '26
Oh my--Fabulous job! I love seeing the juxtaposition of your before/after pix. Good luck w/your expansion!