The lasagna bed

I am slowly building a large perennial bed in my front yard. My house sits on over half an acre on a quiet corner in an older subdivision that has no through traffic. When I moved in, the house had been empty for at least two years, and I gather from the neighbors that the last occupant was a nice guy with some hoarding tendencies and no inclination to maintain the house or yard. The first time I saw the house, the floor to ceiling living room windows were obstructed by vegetation, including mats of English ivy, poison ivy, poison oak, little maple trees and other assorted volunteer trees and shrubs. Last season, the goal was to clear away all the brush surrounding the house. I accomplished a lot of slashing and removing, but I found I also needed/wanted to be planting something.

Although I have removed trees, bushes and weeds, the beds around the house are not in shape for planting. They still need removal of poison ivy (done on my hands and knees with two pairs of gloves and tyvek sleeves I special ordered from a industrial safety company), additional topsoil and soil amendments, and I need to come up with at least a general plan of what I eventually want the landscape to look like before I start putting stuff in the ground willy nilly.

So, I decided to create a bed from scratch. Using orange spray paint, I outlined a pendulous, blob shape in a sunny part of the front yard. Then sprayed the grass and weeds inside the border with Roundup and waited for atomic winter to commence. When I had a huge, brown, scabby patch, I began covering it in sections, using cardboard and thick layers of newspapers. I soak them with water and then dump whatever I have on hand that day on top of the wet barrier. The day's section size depends on the amount of cardboard I have and the amount of organic stuff I have scrounged. I have used shredded leaves, grass clippings, coffee grounds from Starbucks, shredded bushes and branches (from my shredder) dog poop, left over Halloween pumpkins, and vegetables trimmings.

This method is called a lasagna bed, because of the layers of stuff. Someone has written a book and claimed this idea of composting in place as her own. It is one of those book ideas that I kick myself and think why didn’t I think of that? The bed is at least 25 ft across and I didn’t finish it last season. I have been working my way across the blob, so the right hand side, where I started is much farther along than the far left hand side, which still has dead weeds and grass and no cardboard or compostable material. A gardening neighbor started bringing down his bagged grass clippings. I leave them in plastic and let them fester in the sun for a couple of days before I spread them on the bed. Rotting grass is really pungent, but great for compost. When it is hot and dry, I water the bed with the hose, just to keep everything decaying.

Midway through the summer I started to plant stuff--I couldn't help myself. I had splurged and ordered irises from a fancy-pants farm in Oregon and I wanted them to to be in a central, showcase location, able to bake in the sun, and have good drainage. That was the top of my bed. The grass clipping neighbor, who has an established garden, was giving me stuff as he thinned his beds and I had to put the plants somewhere. At the end of the summer, I had more plants than places to put them, so I was putting them directly into compostable material, not soil. Money and time were short, and I didn't want to waste the plants. I had a vague notion of ordering bulk topsoil and mulch, but it never happened and then it was winter.

Yesterday, another neighbor, who I haven't talked to since last fall, came over while I was pulling out two invasive bushes and said that she was anxiously waiting for the bed to bloom. She is the second person to mention waiting to see what comes up. I don't know if the neighbors are excited about the prospect of blooming perennials or if they are sick of looking at the large, multi textured patch of the slimey grass clipping, deflated rotten pumpkins and the broken, dry stems of things I planted late in the season last fall. I am also very curious to see what comes up this spring. I have no doubt the tough-as-nails day lilies will come up. I am not so sure about the spindly peonies I found growing in shade, moved at the end of the summer and planted in grass clippings and alfalfa pellets.