Finally, a few days ago, I was able to get around to working on a small part of my garden. These gardens are new, and I have been adding wood chips to the soil to help improve it over time. At the moment, most of what I am growing in is almost pure wood chips, which is not ideal. Here, we have very heavy clay, and adding wood chips can, over time, help in building raised beds. The problem is, wood can lock up nitrogen, and usually, plants look a bit yellow and don’t grow well. So, I add a fair amount of nitrogen to the beds. I also try to add a nice area of compost around the plant so the wood chips can decompose, and I can still use the beds, even though it may be a few years before they are all broken down into rich soil. I like to add sand to these beds to help with drainage and air in the soil. It just seems to help the soil keep some air, and roots can easily move through it.
One bed I am currently working on is an extremely wet spot that is pretty much a swamp. I want to grow plants that can handle full sun, maybe some shade in the future. I planted 4 cypress trees in this area, but most are still small, 3 to 4 feet tall. The idea is to make a low-maintenance Jurassic-looking garden. At the base of the trees, I have Sabal minor Knoxville, which small seedlings survived last season very well. If my friend is correct, I think it may be the best Sabal minor for us here in KY and other zone 6 growers. A few other plants are Peltandra virginica, also known as the water arum. This plant grows around 2 to 3 feet tall, and the arrowhead-like foliage looks exotic without any winter protection. On the far ends of the beds, which can hold a bit of water, I have Thalia dealbata. Thalia dealbata grows around 4 to 6 feet tall and looks very exotic for a hardy plant, looking like a bird of paradise plant and a canna had crossed. It is an easy and very hardy plant that just needs a wet area to take off in
I plan to use pine straw as my mulch but will also be growing dwarf horsetail (Equisetum scirpoides) as a ground cover, which looks like a small prehistoric-like grass. I first saw it used like this at the Evansville zoo in Indiana. My good friend Paul Bouseman used it under some cypress trees in a parking lot of the zoo, and it filled up the areas completely and looked very unique. I never forgot how prehistoric and simple the setup looked. One of the last plants I will be using is some of the larger ferns that can take full sun. As the trees mature, it will slowly get more shade, but some of the larger ferns can take full sun if grown in a wet area. The ones I plan to put in are the large royal ferns (Osmunda Regalis Spectabilis – Royal Fern) that can get quite large; these maybe planted in the back area of the bed. I also plan to add a few Osmunda cinnamomea (cinnamon fern). I am sure more plants will make it into this odd, swampy full sun bed, but for the moment, these are the first plants going in. I want it to be a bit wild and not need a ton of upkeep and for it to keep that Jurassic feel. I hope to find a few other odd plants to use around the border. I personally like these odd trouble spots in the garden to become a focal area for plants that need these odd conditions to thrive.
